ThePopTort

Some Docs Singing, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” to Drug Makers Over New State Gift Bans

We’ve blogged about the evils of drug companies bearing gifts to doctors a number of times (here, here, here) so when laws to ban such practices in Massachusetts and Vermont went into effect on Wednesday,  we thought it was reason to celebrate (in spite of the wistful Streisand/Diamond-like ballads that will no doubt linger in the hearts of many gift-getting docs).

For example, some doctors, such as Harvard hematologist Thomas Stossel (who is no relation to our buddy John, so far as we know), have organized opposition to the new laws—but recent history has not exactly been supportive of such efforts.

As we’ve noted before, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating Forest Labs for persuading doctors to use its drugs by picking up the tab for expensive meals, vacations, and sporting events.  The company as already set aside $170 million to cover the investigation.  Medtronic paid the government $40 million for dangling “lavish trips” in front of doctors to entice them to use its spinal products.  And Pfizer pled guilty and paid $430 million for enticing doctors into prescribing the drug Neurotonin by giving them “lavish weekends and trips to Florida, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and Hawaii.”

“It’s a winds-of-change bill,” said Ken Libertoff, executive director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health, of the Vermont bill.  “It says the relationship between pharmaceutical manufacturers and the medical field will dramatically change.”

And that may be so, as legislatures in “Oregon, Texas, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois and Maryland” consider similar limits on drug company/doctor gift exchanges.

Nevada Medical Board Elects Not to Hold Malpractice/Hepatitis Doc Accountable

We’ve mentioned before that a Nevada clinic recently “reused syringes and vials,” ultimately exposing some 50,000 of the state’s residents to hepatitis C (here, here, here).

We’ve also mentioned an awful tendency on the part of state medical boards to look the other way when it comes to holding bad doctors accountable, which is why Public Citizen’s Health Research Group publishes an annual report showing which states are the most lenient in dealing with bad doctors.

Well unfortunately, this next item represents an awful merger of these two stories.  In a sickening turn of events, it is being reported today that Dr. Eladio Carrera, whose license was originally suspended for 13 months for his role in the Nevada syringe scandal, has now had his punishment reduced to 24 months of probation, a public reprimand, and a $15,000 fine.  In the meantime, announced Nevada’s Board of Medical Examiners (in a unanimous decision!), Dr. Carrera is free to resume treating patients in the state.

"The board isn't taking this seriously at all," said Gwendolyn Brown, 61, who became infected with hepatitis C as on of Carrera's patients. "You can't believe what you have to go through when you get hepatitis. Don't they realize how sick people get?"

"The only way to fix the medical board is to shut it down and start over with brand-new people," said Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, (D-Reno), whose committee investigated the Las Vegas outbreak. "There's a culture within the medical board that protects doctors and not the public. They should resign for the good of Nevada."

Meanwhile, injured Nevada patients are experiencing a double whammy because they are  also suffering with a draconican “cap” on compensation should they pursue a medical malpractice case.  The legislature still has not passed a bill to ease the cap in cases of “gross negligence,” as with the Hep C scandal. 

And if President Obama’s has his way, a third whammy may be on the way, given his recent flirtations with “bargaining” away the rights of injured patients to gain conservative support for his national health plan.

Accutane Finally Removed From the Market Proving Again That Lawsuits Are the Last Line of Defense Against Unsafe Drugs

Over the weekend Roche Holding, the maker of the dangerous acne drug Accutane took it off the shelves.  This is a development that consumer groups have been calling for for years (as noted in Center for Justice & Democracy’s report, The Bitterest Pill, How Drug Companies Fail to Protect Women and How Lawsuits Save Their Lives.) 

 Here’s how the Associate Press reported it:

The decision was made for economic reasons, not safety reasons, the company said. The drug has a rocky safety history, having been linked to birth defects if taken during pregnancy, along with depression and suicidal thoughts. The company said costs for personal-injury lawsuits are high, but it continues to "rigorously" defend the drug.

In other words, despite how the company puts it, when all else failed, lawsuits finally worked to get this drug off the market.

Indeed, as CJ&D noted in its report, drug has had a long history of medical problems associated with its use and could have as many as 5,000 pending lawsuits against the company.

As early as the late 80’s the FDA was considering removing the drug from the market because of the more than 2,000 documented cases of miscarriages and children born with severe birth defects.  Even so, the drug remained available, with increasingly severe – but ineffective – warnings against taking the drug while pregnant. 

There has also been extended public discussion about the drug’s link to suicide after the suicides of B.J. Stupak, the teenage son of U.S. Representative Bart Stupak, (D-Mich.) who shot himself in 2000, and Charles J. Bishop, the 15-year old who flew a plane into a Florida building in January 2002.  Later that year a congressional oversight committee’s two-year investigation into the health effects and regulatory control of Accutane concluded that the drug had frequently been associated with suicide.

Eleven other countries have already removed the drug from their shelves.

Despite Of What You May Have Heard, GM Will NOT Honor Current Liability Claims

Over the last couple of days, some of the information about GM covering liability claims has been pretty confusing.

Due to all kinds of political pressure, GM made a major concession in the bankruptcy last week.  So if you’re hurt due to a defect in a GM car, and the accident happens AFTER the bankruptcy is over (probably sometime in mid-July) the company will still be responsible for your injuries. 

But if you have already been injured and/or have already filed your claim – you are completely out of luck.  And several major publications are not clearly making that distinction.  The biggest offender was Tuesday’s New York Times, which did not clearly state that this deal only applied to future claims and leaves behind those who had already sued the company.  The Times accepts comments and we encourage PopTort readers to make that point clear on this article.

However there was a bright moment during the bankruptcy hearing yesterday, according to the blog the American Daily Lawyer, the judge agreed that the liability issue was important.

"You've got the most important issue on the docket," the judge told attorney Steve Jakubowski, who represents the consumer groups.

David v. Goliath at the GM Bankruptcy Hearing

Check out last night's CBS Evening News for a great piece making clear that the fight by injured GM claimants to have their rights restored is a real “good vs. evil” kind of struggle.  (Video below.)

At the end of the piece, note the reference to legislation now in Congress that will help Chrysler and GM victims.  The bill, named for Chrysler defect-injury survivor Jeremy Warriner (see his CNN interview here) was introduced last Friday by Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN), “that would require automakers to purchase liability insurance if the are owned by the federal government or have federal loans.”  The insurance would “protect against past and future claims, even after a bankruptcy filing.”

Watch CBS Videos Online

Nestle Cookie Dough E. Coli Update

We told you several days ago about a young woman who filed a lawsuit against Nestle after some of the company’s cookie dough put her in the hospital with E. coli poisoning.  Here are some related developments.

The FDA has confirmed that it found E. coli in a sample of Nestle Toll House Refrigerated Cookie dough at Nestle’s Danville, VA plant.

This same plant “refused to give inspectors access to pest-control records, environmental-testing programs and other information, according to newly released inspection reports covering the past five years.”

No wonder the cause of the E. coli outbreak remains a mystery.  Cookie dough has been linked to salmonella (due to its raw egg component), but not the particular strain of E. Coli at issue here (which derives from the intestines of cattle). 

Meanwhile, tainted-dough-related lawsuits, which hopefully will help dig up the truth, continue to mount (here, here, here).

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Suit All But Over

It was just a couple of weeks ago that we were asking whether Exxon would finally pay what it owed the 33,000 or so Alaskans injured by its 1989, 11 million gallon oil spill into Prince William Sound.  Well, lo and behold, the Anchorage Daily News broke the story yesterday that the answer is yes—almost.

Exxon has now agreed to pay the $470 million in interest it had been dragging its feet in paying to “Alaskan Natives, fisherman, business owners and others” affected by the spill.  However, the company is still battling to stick spill victims with a $70 million bill for “fees and other costs” it incurred during its 20-plus years of appeals.

"Exxon is doing the right thing by stepping forward to compensate those Alaskans and others who are still feeling the effects of the oil spill 20 years later," said Senator Mark Begich (D-AK).  

But the company’s actions may actually have been motivated more by its desire to win a contract to build a “massive North Slope gas pipeline” in the state, said Joe Balash, “a member of the Palin administration’s gas pipeline team.”

"As far as what their ultimate strategy is, in my experience, Exxon doesn't do anything unless they think it's good for their shareholders," he said.

Consumers Injured by Defective GM Cars Continue Fight at Federal Bankruptcy Court Today

The headline pretty much says it all, civil justice fans.  GM auto-defect victims and their families, including some with catastrophic injuries, are in NYC today attending the company’s bankruptcy hearing as they continue fighting its attempts to skirt responsibility for their harms.

Today’s action comes on the heals of a tremendous victory this past Friday when GM caved to pressure and agreed to assume responsibility for injures and deaths caused by defects in its cars - as long as the accident happens after the bankruptcy is over!  Incredibly, it is still washing its hands of any victim currently injured by these cars, taking no responsibility for hundreds of claims over deaths and injuries that exist right now.

This was a morally reprehensible decision by GM and the courageous victims and their families who made it to Manhattan today intend to let the world to know it - and to try to fix it.

More Chrysler/GM “Bankruptcy Loophole” Buzz

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that “[t]he U.S. Treasury Department is negotiating with more than a dozen state attorneys general to roll back two key features of General Motors Corp.'s bankruptcy plan that would have wiped out billions of dollars in potential claims from car-accident victims and closed auto dealers….President Barack Obamas auto task force is considering a plan that would allow those injured in past or future accidents involving GM vehicles to sue the auto maker in state courts after the company emerges from bankruptcy protection, people involved in the discussions said.…The auto task force has been caught off guard by the recent outcry from attorneys general and consumer groups.”

Holy corporate censorship, Batman!  An ad that seriously takes on the “bankruptcy loophole” contained in GM’s Chapter 11 plan (which we’ve posted here and is profiled in the video below) was abruptly pulled by Comcast (America’s largest cable operator) after complaints by GM.  Comcast says a “review” of the ad is pending. 

Philadelphia’s WPVI-TV profiled Terri Cartier whose 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee seat belt malfunctioned during a rollover accident, causing her to be thrown from the car, suffering “broken bones,” and collapsed lungs that “filled with blood.” "They don't care about people's lives,” Cartier said.   “They don't care about family's lives, children, people who die? But they'll fix a part? I think that's wrong. It's sad."

Houston’s KHOU profiled Jimsey Walton, who lost her husband Mike and several inches of bone in her right leg when their 2002 GMC Yukon was involved in a roll over accident, causing the vehicle’s defective roof to crush, and its defective seat belts to disengage, “partially ejecting” the two from the car. “I lost my husband and my two children lost their dad.  I suffered severe injuries that will follow me the rest of my life,” said Jimsey.  “I think they [GM] should be held accountable for what happened to our family.”

The Detroit Free Press and NBC’s Chicago affiliate (video below) profile the Catalano family who lost their mother, Linda, when her 1997 Chrysler Town & Country inexplicably shifted from park to reverse as she was exiting the vehicle, knocking her to the ground and ultimately resulting in her death.

Special Note: The NBC video below also provides one of the most excellent summations of the whole GM/Chrysler “bankruptcy loophole” debacle that we’ve seen—so definitely check it out.

E. Coli-Tainted Nestle Cookie Dough Puts California Teen in the Hospital

You may have heard that one of America’s favorite guilty pleasures—Nestle cookie dough—has unfortunately joined the ranks of “spinach, lettuce, jalapenos, beef, pet food, peanut butter, pistachios and alfalfa sprouts” (among other ingestible items) as a member of America’s recalled/tainted food club.  So far, 70 people nationwide have contracted E. coli from the toxic stuff, and of that, 30 have been hospitalized.

One of those sickened, 18-year-old Jillian Collins of San Carlos, CA ended up having to be hospitalized for seven days in agonizing pain.  She has since filed suit against Nestle, providing yet another example of the essential role lawsuits play in holding negligent food producers accountable and ensuring those harmed are compensated for their injuries.  (See video below.)

We’ll just add this one to ThePopTort's tainted food "Hall of Shame." (here, here, here, here).