Trasylol Lawsuits and Patient Safety
In light of the number of people suffering from Trasylol related kidney failure and other side effects 
such as strokes and heart attacks the number of Trasylol lawsuits being filed continues to rise. Later this year the Supreme Court will hear the case of Wyeth v. Levine which asks the vital question of whether a patient who has been harmed by a drug can sue under state law if the drug was approved by the FDA. The scope of this decision cannot be underestimated. People injured by defective drugs, including people who have filed a Trasylol lawsuit, will be affected by the Supreme Court’s decision in this case.
The top doctors at the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) have come out and strongly stated their opinion along with 47 state attorneys general and two former FDA commissioners, David Kestrel and Donald Kennedy. The journal editors asked the justices to carefully consider how overwhelmed the FDA is and to weigh that against patient safety stating:
"The FDA alone simply lacks the ability to serve as the sole guarantor of drug safety," the doctors said in a brief filed Thursday. Without the discoveries dredged up by plaintiffs' lawyers through liability litigation, "the FDA would be stripped of an essential source of information that the agency has consistently relied on when making its regulatory decisions and the American public would be deprived of a vital deterrent against pharmaceutical company misconduct."
The Wyeth case involves Diana Levine, a Vermont guitarist, who was injected with Phenergan, a medication for nausea, and subsequently developed gangrene which led to the amputation of her arm. She sued the drug’s manufacturer Wyeth, arguing that the manufacturer failed to adequately warn consumers about the risks of the injections. The NEJM editors and scores of others concerned with patient safety are worried that the rights of patients are eroded in the face of preemption arguments aimed to protect drug companies. Proponents of preemption stand by their position that the FDA weighs the risks and benefits of a drug’s safety and after approval the drug manufacturer should be protected from lawsuits by consumers who were injured by the approved drug.
For the latest legal information please visit our Trasylol lawsuit center.
