Lawsuits
oracknows | July 20, 2015And now for something completely different...but depressingly the same in some ways.
Longtime readers—and I do mean longtime—might remember from several years ago a certain case adjudicated before the Vaccine Court. I'm referring, of course, to the Autism Omnibus. In Autism Omnibus, some 4,800 claimants were bringing action seeking compensation for "vaccine injury" characterized by autism. Basically, it was a large number of parents who thought vaccines had caused their children's autism seeking compensation from the Vaccine Court, and they implicated the MMR and thimerosal-containing…
revere | March 9, 2010I'm not sure I completely understand the legal adage, "bad facts make bad law," but the Supreme Court may be about to give us all an object lesson in its meaning. If I do understand it, is that sometimes there are situations -- "bad facts" -- that are so unusual or so horrifying or both -- that they force jurists to make legal decisions in line with what any normal person would consider to be just but with unintended side effects that make "bad law," that is, bad legal precedent. An example is a Texas case where a drunk driver hit a car carrying a pregnant woman whose fetus was seriously…
revere | February 19, 2010The UK has some of the worst libel laws in the world, heavily stacked in favor of those claiming almost any criticism is libel. Perhaps it is a carry over from the days when the upper class brooked no criticism, I don't know, but I was glad to sign a petition calling for reform of these ridiculous laws. The reason I, as a science blogger, would object are well illustrated by two high profile cases, one involving a science writer, Simon Singh, the other a Danish scientist, Henrik Thomsen. Here is the merest sketch of the Singh case, followed by the Thomsen case, including developments in the…
revere | June 22, 2009If you don't want to smell, the FDA has a recommendation: use an over-the-counter cold remedy that contains an intranasal zinc solution. You won't smell. Possibly ever again:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today advised consumers to stop using three products marketed over-the-counter as cold remedies because they are associated with the loss of sense of smell (anosmia). Anosmia may be long-lasting or permanent. (FDA Press Release)
Losing your sense of smell is no joke. It is intimately involved with your sense of taste and is a warning sense for dangerous gases. The role of zinc in…
revere | March 5, 2009The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that if the FDA approves a drug, it doesn't mean you don't have to keep the labeling up to date if you should warn people. So that settles one question about FDA approval. The FDA put its stamp of approval on the drug Vioxx, too, but approved or not, Vioxx was not OK. Some unfortunate people traded their arthritis pain for a heart attack. Not a good trade. So the maker of Vioxx got sued. When the regulatory agencies don't do their job, that's about the only remedy left. More important, it is the only way to change the behavior of companies whose negligence…
revere | January 13, 2009Whenever you read about some high profile drug company trial where the smoking gun is some incriminating email, do you shake your head and wonder, "How could they have written that in an email?" There are two ways for a drug company to protect itself from being nailed by these kinds of emails. The best is not to do things that if written anywhere would incriminate them. The other way is to teach your employees not to leave documentary evidence of your company's misdeeds. Guess which route the drug companies are taking?
Want to avoid those embarrassing internal emails containing concerns that…
revere | December 5, 2008So what does heartburn have to do with diabetes? Funny you should ask. Big Pharma giant AstraZeneca is being sued by 15,000 people who claim that their atypical antipsychotic, Seroquel, causes diabetes. Seroquel is approved for bipolar disorder, but unless there are a lot more people with bipolar disorder than we know, it is clearly being use off label because it is AstraZeneca's second best selling drug. What's the best seller, at least for now? The heartburn/ulcer drug, Nexium:
Seroquel, used to treat bipolar disorder, brought in $4.03 billion last year, making it AstraZeneca's second-…
revere | November 13, 2008Last spring NIH scientist Charles Natanson published a meta-analysis of studies on hemoglobin-based blood substitutes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Natanson, C., Kern, S. J., Lurie, P., Banks, S. M. & Wolfe, S. M. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 299, 2304-2312 (2008)). Blood substitutes are . . . well . . . blood substitutes. Like blood, they carry oxygen, but have long shelf lives, don't need refrigeration, don't require cross-matching and meet the need for situations where there is a shortage of fresh whole blood. A meta-analysis is a systematic summary, often expressed…
revere | November 4, 2008The tort system is the favorite whipping boy of the anti-regulation crowd. That's because once you remove regulation, something the Bush administration has championed and done effectively, the only recourse someone injured by the fraud or negligence of a product or drug manufacturer is through a lawsuit for damages. Since the anti-regulation crowd serves Big Pharma and their cronies, this is the perfect solution: no constraints. The propaganda machine, aided an abetter by a compliant congress and a business dominated media, has been extremely successful in promoting the idea that tort suits…
revere | February 13, 2008If I commit a crime against and possibly damage who knows how many American citizens I sure hope Congress comes to my rescue and gives me retroactive immunity:
The Senate voted Tuesday to shield from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
After nearly two months of stops and starts, the Senate rejected by a vote of 31 to 67 a move to strip away a grant of retroactive legal immunity for the companies.
President Bush has promised to veto any new surveillance bill that does not…
revere | January 22, 2008Recently we posted on the EPA highly unusual (as in unprecedented) decision to reject Californian's new greenhouse gas regulations. Why did they do it? Good question and one the California Congressional delegation wanted an answer to. To whom did EPA talk about the regulations? Who advised them to reject it? Sorry. Mum's the word. Actually its words. Executive privilege:
Invoking executive privilege, the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations.
The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer…
revere | December 29, 2007This both made me laugh and made me mad. Corey Doctorow over at Boingboing relates how he was contacted by a new online service to write a letter of recommendation for a former student applying to graduate school. Using a web-based interface the same letter could be submitted to multiple universities. Good idea. Like a lot of professors I have to write a lot of these and making it easier is good for me and good for students. The catch was that this one came with an end user license agreement (EULA) requiring the submitter (who is doing everyone a favor, including the web-based application…
revere | July 17, 2006An interesting Commentary on the problem of releasing the flu sequences has been posted on the blog Anthropologique by its proprietor, J. F. Brinkworth. I disagree with it, but he makes some pertinent points.
Brinkworth believes WHO is not at fault for failure to release the Indonesian sequences and he provides some information of which I, and probably most others, are not aware:
Indonesia has very, very stringent nucleic sequence I.P. laws. All genetic material recovered there is their property. Their Convention of Biological Dviersity Law No.5 (1994) and Cultural Practices Law No. 12 (1992…