Coverage of the PPH judgement against Wyeth

[teryang]

...is skewed to impugn jury verdict.

Why does the press uncritically pass on intentional misrepresentations concerning Wyeth's misconduct? All one has to do is read the PDR for 1994 through 1997 to realize Wyeth misrepresented the risk of pulmonary hypertension and primary pulmonary hypertension, a much more serious disease, to the public. Why didn't they warn the public of the real number of PH cases and the reports of primary pulmonary hypertension?

But here is what the press repeats uncritically:

<Wyeth said it has acted responsibly and provided adequate warnings about primary pulmonary hypertension, which did not develop in Cappel-Coffey until more than four years after she stopped using Pondimin in June 1997>

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/040427/health_wyeth_verdict_3.html

Reuters
Jury Award Tops $1 Billion in Wyeth Case
Tuesday April 27, 8:59 pm ET

I guess they had to throw in the causation issue to cloud the intentional misrepresentation which appears in its full glory in the PR newswire statement:

<According to Bill Sims, an attorney representing Wyeth in the case, the evidence shows that at the time she took the drug, Wyeth had acted responsibly and had provided adequate PPH warnings in compliance with FDA regulations.>

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?d=t&s=WYE

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Yeah they are using her size and the fact that the onset was later

in order to defend, but the jury also felt they were guilty of criminal acts. A huge portion of the settlement is punitive.

Here's a better article:

But O'Quinn said the jury found that Wyeth had erased entries describing problems with the drug on "adverse drug event" forms it is required to file with the FDA.

"That broke the cap because if the jury finds the corporation committed a criminal act, the cap doesn't apply," O'Quinn said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2535422

[teryang]

2. Then there is the three months of emails

...they destroyed during the original Linen investigation after a Massachussets court order to preserve evidence.

I assume that you are referring to the erasure of the original "heart valve damage" case reports from Fargo which were initially destroyed by the company in March 1997. (Dispensing with the Truth, Alicia Mundy 261-264)

The IPPHS study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in August 1996. The preliminary results were out much earlier showing that fenfluramine caused PPH.

The company aborted its own internal efforts which began in June 1994 (Mundy 175) to change the label concerning pulmonary hypertension long before the final IPPHS report. The industry knew something was up in early 1994. (Mundy 56-57) Yet they obstructed the change to label warnings for two years. FDA regulations don't require proof of a causal relationship to trigger label warnings when there are a significant number of ADEs.

They had been in touch with the IPPHS doctors who were sponsored by the licensor in Europe. Those world stature pulmonary experts publicly warned the FDA in Sep. 1995. The companies knew there was a problem but selling the diet drug to uniformed Americans was just too profitable.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. This isn't the first time for Wyeth

One of the first cases I worked on was a case against them where a 4 month old child was given a flu vaccine, developed encephalitis and was left quadriplegic as a result....their tactics are always the same.

[teryang]

4. This and the cigarette cases

...intoduced me to the corporate PR/propaganda techniques, the media training, the talking points, the Q & A points, the video and audio trailers etc. used to flood the media with denials of the scientific facts. The marketing techniques for these drugs (and other drugs today) makes me wonder how the drug manufacturers call themselves ethical. The similarity to techniques used by the repukes like Hughes and Rove is sickening.

The expert physicians and doctors who will say and do anything for a dollar are also an eye opener. It's just that Wyeth is obviously in flagrante dilicto, nothing can save them except their settlement agreement with its ban on punitives and overly restrictive rules on what evidence can be used at trial.

The PPH cases can be exceptional if they get to trial because they are (partially) outside the scope of the settlement agreement.