My pet theory? It's a CYA measure. If you list all, even most rare or absurd possible side effects, you can protect yourself in case someone's body does something weird and the person decides to sue you. Mind you, the "side-effect" can be totally unrelated to your drug, and caused by other illness, genetics, eating something bad the night before, etc. It's often impossible to determine for an average person what caused what in their bodies, but that won't necessarily stop people from going to court.
BTW. on one drug I take I noticed a different way of listing side effects. They divided them into groups labelled (> 1 in 10, > 1 in 100, > 1 in 1000, etc.). This still keeps the CYA value while giving me the ability to prepare myself for what realistically might happen after I take the drug.
I often wonder if they had done their research with the original story how it would have turned out. We live in a print and fact check later[1] and I think we suffer for it.
I'm sure an anti-vaxxer upon hearing the number of warnings on each new drugs has their opinion validated[2]. Or hearing there was mercury in some vaccines.
Heck, we go about things just stupidly. Get rid of incandescent light bulbs to save the environment. Hey, what the heck, these new bulbs all have mercury?!? I cannot just throw them away and if they break I have to do what?!? Did the change really help or should we have picked that battle a bit later when LEDs were further along? Don't really know, doubt I will see any good reporting to tell me the answer.
I'm really not sure our journalists are equipped for a world that really needs us to weigh risks.
Celebrity is a big part of it these days too. Why we listen to people who are famous for a sex tape is beyond me. I guess reporters like to meet them. I suppose that explains the WHCA dinner[3].
1) it still amuses me the number of times the NY Times has mixed up the state for South and North Dakota Senators.
2) the real danger is obscuring the real big warnings with all the little crap. Look at the warnings on a Tylenol bottle and then find the one that really matters. Why are we telling everyone all the warnings for prescription drugs? Doctors will do that before prescribing and do a better job of explaining.
3) http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/204881-whit...