Not Even Major Law Suits Can Stop Big Pharma in its Tracks

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Introducing the latest courtroom celebrities... Drum roll please... Pharmaceutical giants!

Is the growing trend for Big Pharma to settle legal claims a humble gesture to admit their misdemeanours or a thinly disguised ploy to cover their own backs and prevent future investors from being scared away?

My bet?

It must be the latter...

Drop in the ocean

Astrazeneca, Britain’s second biggest drug maker has been hit by masses of legal claims against their drug Seroquel – an antipsychotic drug used to treat schizophrenia.

The company reached a $198 million settlement over 17,500 claims, saying that the drug caused patients to develop diabetes.

Seroquel is the world’s 5th best-selling drug with annual sales of $4.9 billion... With annual sales figures like that, it’s no wonder that financial analysts said the settlement figure is small...

Small!?

You bet it is. The settlement will pay a meagre $11,000 per claim. For someone that is going to suffer from diabetes for the rest of his or her life, that is a real slap in the face...

But it doesn’t stop there.

Earlier this year the company paid out $520 million to the US Justice Department over claims that it illegally pushed Seroquel for unapproved uses, including insomnia and mental disorders aside from schizophrenia...

A lawyer working on the case, at the time, said that the drug maker ‘turned patients into guinea pigs in an unsupervised drug test.’

Well, it’s not the first time that patients have been turned into guinea pigs...

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Band of brothers

Astrazenaca is not the only pharmacuetical giant that’s been in the naughty corner lately.

Their biggest rival, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) had to cough-up a £1.6 billion charge for numerous misdemeanours including litigation over their block-buster diabetes drug Avandia, and Paxil an antidepressant.

Worst is, in spite of all the court cases, the claims, the pay-outs and the countless studies and reports on adverse- side-effects – not to mention the countless lives they destroy – these drugs stay on the market and the companies’ doors stay open for business.

According to news sources, Avandia has been linked to 304 deaths during the third quarter of 2009 and still the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to ban the drug.

The only thing that sets Avandia apart from other poisons is its label. As you’ll know from reading recent e-alerts on this diabetes drug... it increases stroke risk by 27 per cent, increases heart failure risk by 25 per cent, increases risk of either heart attack or stroke by 14 per cent and increases risk of death by 13 per cent. It is now estimated that one in every 60 people who takes Avandia will experience some kind of harmful side effect.

Imagine if a nutritional supplement or herbal remedy caused these kinds of side-effects... there’d be a huge controversy and they’d be banned instantly...

Paxil? Not any different.

Earlier this year, it was found that women who use the antidepressant Paxil (Seroxat) at the same time as Tamoxifen — a drug used to stop the recurrence of breast cancer — were at greater risk of dying from cancer.

Other than that, GSK has also been sued on two separate occasions by patients claiming their use of Paxil during pregnancy caused their babies to suffer life-threatening heart defects.

Only after 2003, when the FDA ordered pharmaceutical companies to do more safety studies on their respective antidepressants, did GSK acknowledged there was an increased risk of birth defects associated with Paxil.

Those birth defects include cardiac defects ranging from septal defects to complete deformation of the heart. Paxil has also been associated with cranial and abdominal defects, as well as neural tube malformations, more commonly recognized as spina bifida and anencephaly.

I could carry on for days... but I am sure you catch my drift.

The truth is, it seems that Big Pharma has turned into a Pharma Monster with a licence to kill (or at the very least cause harm) and nothing or nobody seems to be able to bring these guys to justice! Not even court cases and pay-outs, because something much bigger is at play... Like an Astrazenca spokesman said after settling the 17,500 claims against Seroquel through court-ordered mediation, “We believe it was in the best interest of the company to explore resolving these cases through the mediation process.”

Of course it was, you definitely did not have the interest and safety of the patient at heart...

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Sources:

AstraZeneca Pays $198M To Settle US Seroquel Claims, published online, 09.08.10, online.wsj.com

Avandia Still on the Market Despite Cardiac Deaths, by Debra Manzella, published online 22.02.10, diabetes.about.com

Anti-depressant linked to breast cancer deaths, by Jenny Hope, published online 09.02.10, dailymail.co.uk

Seroxat + tamoxifen = Deaths, published online 19.03.10, al7alem.com

Paxil Birth Defects Lawsuit - GSK Ordered to Turn Over Emails, published online 16.09.09, lawyersandsettlements.com