There were a number of potential disasters that we might have avoided. One of them has to do with two drugs that are used to treat heart arrhythmias. These got to be widely prescribed by doctors, not for serious heart arrhythmias but for very minor heart arrhythmias. When the trials were eventually done to look at this issue, it turned out that these drugs were killing more people than they were benefiting.
Although not in the 1990s, we can look at Vioxx. Vioxx was approved in 1999 in Canada. By 2003 it was the 10th most widely prescribed drug in the country in terms of number of prescriptions, and in September 2004 it was pulled from the market because of the cardiac risks associated with it.
Finally, there is the question of the hormone replacement therapies that again were widely used by post-menopausal women. When the trial in the U.S., which had to be publicly funded because the companies were not willing to fund it on their own.... When that trial result was published it turned out that, yes, the hormone replacement did reduce fractures, but it also increased the number of cardiac problems and increased the number of strokes and it increased the number of people with breast cancer.
All of those could potentially have been avoided with better disclosure of information.