July 2010

Pay-to-delay deals help no one and nothing outside of the bottom lines of a few big pharmaceutical companies.  Here’s hoping they go away soon…

FOR TOO LONG, pay-for-delay settlements have been an accepted part of the health-care landscape. In these deals, a brand-name drug manufacturer pays a generic competitor to delay its entry into the

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t trust pharmaceutical sales reps.  Few of them are medical doctors, but they tell doctors which drugs should be prescribed for which patients.  Traditionally, their compensation is based in part upon how many drugs the doctors they visit prescribe.  This leads to a gigantic incentive to engage in off-label

The fact that the average plaintiff will receive $10,000 doesn’t surprise me.  These were very, very difficult cases to prove. There are many causes of diabetes, and it’s pretty tough to prove that Seroquel is what caused it.

AstraZeneca Plc agreed to pay $2 million to settle more than 200 cases over its antipsychotic drug

There are still thousands of Avandia lawsuits pending, but apparently 10,000 of them will be settled:

On Tuesday, Glaxo agreed to pay $460 million to settle thousands of lawsuits over Avandia, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the settlements.

Glaxo will settle about 10,000 suits for an average of $46,000 each, Bloomberg said. A source

If it weren’t for the Avandia lawyers who are suing GSK, this deposition would have never been taken.  That’s because, surprisingly, the FDA can’t subpoena GSK employees and records while any Avandia lawyer can.

WASHINGTON—A former Food and Drug Administration official said the maker of diabetes drug Avandia withheld from regulators information suggesting the drug

Something interesting I recently learned is that people who took Fen-Phen as long as 20 years ago may just now be starting to develop severe heart problems, such as Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, or PPH.  The PPH lawyers I’ve spoken to indicate that Fen-Phen lawsuits are far from over.

Wyeth, acquired by Pfizer Inc. in October,