We live in the age of data, not information. Which is to say that the amount of digital data doubles every 18 months. But there is not necessarily a smarter set of people assimilating, digesting, diagnosing, learning from this data. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace--you get the idea. Sure, there's a lot of 1's and 0's there, but what does it mean? Sleater Kinney deified (albeit sardonically) digital data in "God is a Number", saying "Looking for some kind of heart inside this great machine, I don't get an answer except 01 1 01 1 01..."

In light of "$7m damages award to a Vermont woman who sued Wyeth", Wyeth could reasonably ask when is more data information, and when is it noise.

An article on the court decision is at http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Industry-Drivers/Wyeth-s-appeal-failure-could-impact-US-drug-labelling, and it states that the ruling "means that drugmakers are still vulnerable to State consumer liability lawsuits despite FDA approval for a drug and its labelling".

Wyeth retorts: "When lay juries are permitted to second-guess the experts at FDA on the benefits and risks of particular medicines, the result is uncertainty for patients and doctors alike about how and when to use prescription drugs".

The bigger question is, how much should be printed on the label (or on the attached data sheets)? Do people read those folded inserts or the 2 point font on the labels? Is it information, or is it just unread data; that is, noise?

Perhaps the label itself should include the following items: (1) quite overt printed information about known (and FDA prescribed) issues; (2) the inserted text covering the FDA regulations; and (3) a website (or printed target--e.g. a barcode--to point your mobile device to a website) that contains by state/province/jurisdiction additional information. This affords important information to be with the product even offline while allowing jurisdictions to post their specific data dynamically online. 

Maybe then we can turn to Sting and the Police instead of Sleater Kinney for the final word: "Too much information running through my brain, Too much information driving me insane." I'd rather have information than just a bunch of 1's and 0's...

Cheers,

Steve