Drugs are supposed to help you get better, but in many cases drugs have side effects that are as bad as or worse than the condition they are supposed to treat. These risks are often concealed from everyone outside the company, including doctors and the FDA, and may take a decade or more to become clear, long after the drug has become popular and profitable. Due to the profitability of certain blockbuster drugs, some pharmaceutical drug manufacturers can be extremely reluctant to settle defective drug claims. That’s why you need an experienced attorney on your side.
If you have been hurt or lost a loved one due to a defective drug, you may be able to get compensation for your injury or loss. To learn about your options, please contact AccidentAttorneys.org today to talk to a defective drug claims attorney in your area.
Concealing Dangers of Drugs
No one knows more about a pharmaceutical drug than its manufacturer. This is a principle the Supreme Court has used to decide that manufacturers are responsible when their labeling contains inadequate warnings, and it is often true that the manufacturer knows enough about their product to conceal its dangers.
Once a manufacturer is aware of a potential risk, they can design studies that will seem to give information about the drug, but do not reveal important details because they:
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Are not large enough to show risks
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Compare the drug with treatments that have similar risks
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Use a population with confounding factors
As the studies are being completed, researchers can even tweak the results by excluding certain subjects from the final data for arbitrary reasons. To find that this has been done, regulators and doctors would have to pour over millions of pages of documents that are held at the company and only available under special request.
In addition, when researchers at universities discover the risks independently, they are threatened by the company, which may call the dean or department head and threaten to file slander or libel lawsuits.
Promoting Dangerous Drugs
At the same time the drug manufacturer is concealing the risks of a drug, they are making sure it is being prescribed. They may give free samples to doctors and hire other doctors to talk up the benefits of the drug, often at special conferences that doctors are paid to attend. The company may commission studies specifically designed to make the drug look good, and suppress the publication of studies that reveal weaknesses.
You may have seen the advertisements aimed directly at you related to the drug itself, but they also often promote awareness of the condition the drug is used to treat, which may not in itself be serious.
Advertising efforts like these can push the drug’s earnings into the billion-dollar range long before the dangerous effects of the drug become known.
An Experienced Attorney Can Help
When attempting to get compensation for an injury caused by a dangerous drug, your attorney must have expertise in many areas such as pharmacology, medicine, and biology as well as the complexities of the law—or have access to experts in those areas. Attorneys without this level of expertise may be unable to handle your case, and may make it so you cannot get compensation.
The attorneys at AccidentAttorneys.org are all recognized experts in personal injury law. They have been recognized by their peers or independent ratings agencies for their high level of competence.
Defective Drug Claims Frequently Asked Questions
Who Can Be Held Liable for Injuries Caused by Defective Drugs?
When you have been harmed by a defective drug, you seek compensation from the pharmaceutical company, and sometimes others along the supply chain, through a product liability lawsuit. Drug makers have a duty to warn the public, doctors and other health care professionals about the dangers their products present. When they fail to do so, they can be held liable for the injuries and deaths that their drugs cause.
Can I Sue and Win if The Drug Has Not Been Recalled?
Yes. A recall can be used as evidence in your favor, but it is not necessary. Many defective drugs are never recalled, and when recalls are issued it is often after many people have been harmed or died as a result of the defect. If you have been harmed by a dangerous drug, you can seek compensation even if the drug has not been recalled and you can win without a recall. There may be many others, even hundreds of other people who have suffered the same type of harm caused by the drug who have already come forward or who will come forward as a result of the action you take.
The Drug that Harmed Me was Recalled, but it is Still Available. Why?
It is very rare for a drug to be withdrawn from the market after it has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Most recalls are for label changes, typically the addition of stronger warnings about the dangers of the drug.
Occasionally there will be a recall of specific units of a drug due to a manufacturing problem or similar issue that only affects a certain batch or batches and is not related to the nature of the drug itself. Contamination is a common cause for this type of recall.
Does My Drug Injury Lawsuit Fall Under Medical Malpractice?
Defective drug lawsuits fall under product liability. When the pharmaceutical company fails to warn healthcare professionals about the dangers posed by a drug, the drug company is responsible for the harm caused. Drug injuries caused by a mistake made by a healthcare professional fall under medical malpractice.
In rare cases, a drug injury can fall under both. For example, when a labelling defect makes it too easy to make a mistake in administering the drug, responsibility may fall on the drug maker as well as the healthcare professional or institution that made the mistake.
Sometimes, after a drug injury, it is hard to determine whether the harm was the result of a defective drug or medical negligence. You do not have to figure it out on your own. An experienced defective drug attorney or medical malpractice attorney can determine who was responsible for your drug injury and which type of case you should pursue.
