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We live in a culture that venerates the new: new fashions, new cars, new movies—and new “miracle” drugs. But like new cars that exhibit glitches leading to recalls, new drugs may have unexpected side effects.

Consider the now infamous diet-drug combination fen-phen (fenfluramine and phentermine). The drugs themselves were not new, but the combination was hailed as a “breakthrough” in 1992 when doctors began prescribing it regularly. After more than 6 million prescriptions had been written, the duo was found to cause heart valve damage.

Before gaining approval, new drugs must be tested in both lab animals and humans. But those tests often create little more than the illusion of safety. The FDA may approve a new drug based on studies that show benefits without significant side effects in 2,000 rats and 200 humans. But the drug may cause serious problems in one of every 5,000 users. It would take several years for enough people to experience the problem and to connect it to the drug. A General Accounting Office review of 198 of the 209 new drugs approved from 1976 to 1985 found that 52 percent had “serious postapproval risks.”

Of course, if you have a life-threatening illness, the benefits of new drugs outweigh the risks. But for less grave conditions, think twice before taking new drugs.—M.C.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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