Sally,

You hit the nail on the head when you said that the docs MUST tell their patients of ALL the risks if they want to try Tysabri. If after that is done and the patient still decides to go ahead with the drug, then that is the patient's perogative and right to do.

In my opinion, good marketing/advertising always trumps good science (in the short term, anyway) and there aren't too many pharmas better at it than Bigoen. Before Tysabri got approved the first time, you only had to follow how Biogen's marketing people hyped this drug, continually quoting the high numbers in both reduction of lesions and "risk" of disease progression over the placebo patients in the trials. The dangerous side of the drug was all but ignored and minimized when information about the infections surfaced. Heck, the press had to use the freedom of information act to obtain this detrimental data.

For sure, Tysabri is a drug were the users must be carefully and constantly monitored for these dangers. I just hope there aren't any more "surprises" with it as more and more MS patients start to try it.

Harry