Wyeth Must Pay for Practicing to Deceive
Contributor
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Cases involving lawsuits against Wyeth (a division of Pfizer) are going to trial and juries are being permitted to hear all the evidence against Wyeth. The evidence is clear: Wyeth acted in a way that was negligent and at least one juror has characterized Wyeth’s conduct as “despicable”.
Studies now confirm that 200,000 women – our grandmothers, our mothers, our sisters and our wives – would not have suffered breast cancer but for their use of combination hormone therapy drugs.
The evidence has caused two juries to deliver verdicts for combined totals of over 10 million dollars in compensatory damages and over 100 million dollars in punitive damages. In a total of 10 jury trials, jurors have delivered verdicts to plaintiffs of over 30 million dollars in compensatory damages and over 160 million dollars in punitive damages.
Was Wyeth negligent in its placing Prempro on the market? Clearly, the evidence demonstrates and the jury verdicts ratify that Wyeth was negligent.
The evidence of Wyeth’s conduct in these cases is damning. As early as 1975, Wyeth was on notice that combination hormone therapy causes breast cancer. Wyeth did nothing and continued to market the drug and take in huge profits.
Wyeth took steps to try and downplay the risk of these drugs and made efforts to contain data from other institutions, which demonstrated the risk.
Wyeth sponsored a practice of “ghost writing” of medical literature that promoted combination hormone therapy like PremPro. In addition, Wyeth exaggerated the benefits of hormone therapy in these very same “authoritative” articles written by Wyeth employees or agents.
Wyeth failed to conduct further studies of HRT even after the FDA told them in 1983 that human clinical trials were the only way to ascertain the safety of their drug.
The trial of these cases and the verdicts after jury upon jury has heard the evidence is a classic illustration of the justice system as a method for consumer protection when no other system will accomplish it.
Wyeth would not listen to “the truth will set you free” and they now are paying for decades of profits gained “while practicing to deceive”.