Last month, I took exception to a Drug and Device Law Blog post and wrote a semi snarly retort on the topic of the confidentiality of discovery documents. Bad move. The Drug and Device Law Blog fired back a response pretty much took my post and beat me over the…
The Drug and Device Law Blog has an articulate rant about plaintiffs’ lawyers jerking around defendants on whether certain documents produced should be deemed confidential. The core of their argument is that plaintiffs’ interests in the battle over confidential documents are either for (1) sport or (2) to shop documents…
Lots going on in GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia world. They’ve been wounded but avoided summary execution yesterday when twelve of 33 members voted to allow it to stay on the market, albeit with significant restrictions and black box warnings. See CNN’s article. One expert cited in the article noted that: “I don’t…
The medical journal The Lancet is chiming in on the Avandia debacle. Back in 2009, The Lancet published a paper about the RECORD study (funded by Avandia manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline) which was widely criticized. The major complaint is that the article did not include the drop-out rate—without knowing which patients went…
Two prominent Chicago orthopedic surgeons are calling for the recall of Zimmer’s NexGen CR-Flex Knee replacement devices. There has already been a recall of related devices to a part of the knee. The porous femoral component (that is, the part of the replacement that covers the head of the femur,…
The first federal Kugel Mesh hernia repair lawsuit began in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, yesterday. Plaintiff John Whitfield claims that the mesh, manufactured by Davol, Inc., was defective and broke after it was implanted, causing bowel obstruction, abdominal pain, nausea, permanent bowel injuries, and…
The Avandia debacle heats up, this time in the medical journal community. The editor of the premier medical journal, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has taken other journals to task for their methods of publishing articles. Using the Avandia RECORD study as the example of the conflicts…
If my Google Reader subscriptions are any indication, about 50% of the new blog posts across the web in the past couple of days have been about Avandia. This post is intended as a hub for basic information on Avandia and the status of the proposed Avandia recall. Indications: Avandia…
Two contrasting Accutane lawsuit updates in the news today: First, some background. Accutane is used to treat severe acne and has been associated with a host of problems: birth defects, inflammatory bowel disease, injuries to the liver, kidneys, nervous system, and pancreas, dermatological reactions, and even suicide. Roche stopped selling…
As you remember, Fosamax, Merck’s osteoporosis drug, is the subject of much litigation. The question presented is whether the drug causes osteonecrosis of the jaw, which is the death of jawbone tissue. Judge Keenan, ruling over the federal Fosamax cases from his bench in the U.S. District Court for the…