Dangerous Defective Drugs

Pharmaceutical companies manufacture and market hundreds of new drugs each year. Each product is regulated and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before it reaches the consumer, yet every year over 200,000 people die from using these drugs. It is estimated that more than 50% of all the drugs marketed to the American consumer have deleterious effects, despite testing and FDA regulation.

Among the recent examples of harmful drugs, most were withdrawn from sale within 12 months of release. However, some were still marketed by drug companies even after evidence of serious side effects or death had been noted. By law, drug manufacturers are strictly liable for injuries if the product they sell is defective or unreasonably dangerous. This can happen in several ways.

The product may be defective because of an error in the manufacturing process. Consumers may not be warned of possible bad effects from the use of the product. The product has a design flaw that makes it dangerous.

In all of these cases, the manufacturer is liable and can be sued for damages even if they were unaware of the danger. It does not matter how carefully the product was produced or labeled.

Many pharmaceutical products have caused such widespread injury that thousands of lawsuits, called mass tort litigation, have been filed against the manufacturers. Some of these drugs include: Vioxx, Bextra, Zyprexa, Plavix and Celebrex. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals has paid billions of dollars for injuries sustained due to use of the weight-loss drug combination known as Fen Phen.

Of additional concern are the dietary supplements which are becoming increasingly popular. The FDA requires that manufacturers assure that such supplements are safe before selling them, but no formal testing or approval requirements exist.

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Accutane	Dostinex	Plavix	Rezulin	Trovan
Actonel	Duract	PPA Products	Risperdal	Viagra
Arava	Fosamax	Prempro	Ritalin	Vioxx
Avandia	Ketek	Prilosec	Serentil	Zoloft
Baycol	Lamisil	Prevacid	Seroquel	Zyban
Bextra	Meridia	Propulsid	Serzone
Cardura	Nexium	Prozac	Sporanox
Celebrex	Ortho Evra	Raplon	SSRI Drugs
Celexa	Oxycontin	Raxar	Stadol
Comfrey	Paxil	Remicade	Tequin
Crestor	Permax	ReNu	Trasylol