Wyeth Loses Diet Pill Lawsuit Over Lung Ailment
3 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 22nd, 2008 // 4:08 pm
Will fen-phen never end? It is now 11 years since Wyeth withdrew its famous fat pills - Pondmin, which was one half of the weight-loss combination, and Redux, its chemical cousin - and the litigation is still dragging on.
Today, a jury in a state court in Hackensack, New Jersey, awarded $3 million to Gloria Ann Stribling, who alleged one of the diet pills caused her to develop primary pulmonary hypertension, a potentially fatal lung ailment. The pills were yanked in 1997 due to links to PPH and heart attacks. For its part, Wyeth is reviewing its options.
“We respectfully disagree with the jury’s finding and believe it is unsupported by the evidence, which demonstrated that Mrs. Stribling’s health problems were caused by her severe, longstanding obstructive sleep apnea and not the diet drugs she took more than 10 years ago,” Steve Reade, an attorney from Arnold & Porter, who represented Wyeth, says in a statement. “The evidence also demonstrated that the drug labels were adequate, and that changes to those labels would have made no difference to Mrs. Stribling or her doctors.”
Nathan
Justice in Michigan,
Here’s a preemption question for you: What did Wyeth do wrong to deserve paying out $20 BILLION in liability over the last 11 years? Were any laws broken? Did Wyeth deserve what it got? To my knowledge, no one has proven any sort of a coverup. No criminal liability has been found. Yet it has had to make $20 billion in payouts. Should preemption have played a role?
Nathan
By the way, as an addendum, only about 1000-2000 people were seriously injured by fen-phen. That amounts to roughly a $1 billion per major injury. And you wonder why big pharma is pushing preemption….
This single drug nearly killed Wyeth. It’s only due to great management and some lucky breaks on new drugs that allowed it to survive at all.
I understand your arguements against preemption. But I don’t think you (and others) understand the gravity of the situation faced by pharma these days. Our days are numbered unless something significantly breaks in our favor.
http://www.fenphencentral.com/
John
What the drug did is take my wife. I watch her everyday suffering from pulmonary hypertension. She can’t cry or laugh because she can’t get enough air even on oxygen all the time. She must take $5000 a month in medication. We have 2 daughters and 7 grand children who see her suffer every day.Now they want to push for preemption. The single drug is killing my wife. She was the best thing in our life now she is dying. The drug company should only have to pay for the people who really have suffered. The people who submit false papers to gain from the drug companies should go to jail.