What is Big Tobacco doing in the Florida tobacco litigation now? They are sending out teams of lawyers and investigators to track down and interview each smoker’s sons, daughters, grandchildren, Aunt Mary, Uncle Bob, the third cousin twice removed, the neighbors, the neighbors neighbors—you get the idea. (more…)
As if keeping up with what is a brand name versus what is a generic medication wasn’t enough, now you can’t even be certain whether what you’re handed by your local pharmacy is even the real deal anyway. Pretty scary stuff.
So the question is while we all are paying the highest prices in decades for our medication how does this happen? The industry and FDA indicate these are high quality fakes. Sorry, not good enough and I don’t buy it. Frankly, that is taking the easy way out. Consumers deserve better. The facts are in the ever expanding effort to lower costs; the pharmaceutical companies and the retail pharmacies, like so many industries, have defaulted to price and profit over quality and safety. Come on, I don’t care how good these pills look shouldn’t these big companies know and investigate who they are buying from? My late father, a very wise man, used to love to use the phrase “too good to be true”. One wonders if a new supplier comes in to the pharmaceutical market, with seemingly impossibly low prices, who is doing the testing of the product and the background check when the bells should be going off? I guess certain folks simply don’t want the answer to some obvious questions. According to the US News and World Report it is left to consumers like Arthur Soclof, an allergist in Livonia Michigan, who on his own discovered his cholesterol medication, Lipitor, sold to him by his local pharmacy, was a fake. (more…)
Not necessarily. The herbal product industry is still a largely unregulated industry and historically we know that many of America’s Corporate Citizens have a hard time policing themselves. When those spreadsheets hit the boardroom tables in Big Corporations, it can be difficult for them to consider safety and not focus exclusively on profit margin, bottom line.
When you pick up an herbal drug, you may ask yourself just how much testing and safety analysis the product has undergone. Until the product causes a problem, no one may know for certain. If the problem does not reach the attention of the FDA or Trial Attorneys, consumers may suffer injury or death without discovery that it is the “natural herbal product” that is the culprit.
International Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. has agreed to recall a product called “Viril-Ity-Power (VIP) Tabs, but only after the FDA analyzed the product and advised International Pharmaceuticals that it could cause dangerous drops in blood pressure in some patients. Viril-Ity-Power was touted as a sexual enhancement in the same category as Viagra and similar, regulated drugs. Consumers with diabetes, high blood pressure high cholesterol, or heart disease often takes these types of products. Those consumers, of course, are at most risk with a side effect that dangerously lowers blood pressure.
Kudos to the FDA for their analysis and action to cause a recall.
A lot has happened since 1994 when the FDA decided to let “their hair down” and deregulate the Herbal Supplement Industry at the pleas of “naturalists” who demanded that the government and pharmaceutical industry were in a conspiracy to keep these less costly “natural products” out of the hands of the consumer.
As herbal supplements became the new “drug of choice”, offering lower costs and “safe” natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals demand skyrocketed and the industry became rife with opportunities for profit and exploitation. It is clear that, as with other industries, recognizing the problems with allowing an industry to “self regulate” might be equated to letting the fox in the henhouse and being surprised when the chickens are gone. According to a new report filed by Global Industry Analysts Inc.
The story was about the progressive illness and death of a popular area TV personality, John Eastman. He was known as the dean of Tampa Bay talk radio. It is a story that is unfortunately very typical of many smoking victims. Mr. Eastman began smoking at the age of 12 because everyone his age was smoking; it was the cool thing to do. His addiction developed into a four pack a day habit and he believed those ads that told him smoking was “good” for his throat: “Philip Morris’ superiority for the nose and throat is RECOGNIZED by eminent medical authorities; no other cigarette can make that statement” (quoted from Philip Morris ad” . His career ended when those very cigarettes that Big Tobacco promised were good for his throat, took his professional voice away.
Our thoughts go out to Mr. Eastman’s sons for the untimely loss of their father at the hands of Big Tobacco.
I want to add, however, some information not mentioned in the article. This is information about the attorney who fought many years to achieve justice for Mr. Eastman. That attorney was Howard Acosta; he faced the “scorched earth” tactics employed by Big Tobacco’s lawyers and he won justice for his client. When most attorneys would not or could not take on the juggernaut of Big Tobacco’s well funded defense lawyers, Howard Acosta beat them back and gave his client some amount of comfort in his last days.
Howard Acosta has been practicing law and defending the rights of injured victims for 29 years. He has not stood on the sidelines of difficult fights; he has entered the fray against very formidable adversaries. Big Tobacco has been known to spend millions of dollars on just one plaintiff’s lawsuit in an effort at grinding the plaintiff or his attorney into submission. This is not litigation for the faint hearted.
Do Big Corporations rail against the production of defective products? Do they form groups to monitor unsafe manufacturing methods? Does Corporate America want to put the American consumer first? The answer is a resounding—NO! So, do these things, by themselves, make Big Corporations bad? Again, a resounding-NO!
Corporate America is in the business of maximizing profits. This strengthens our economy and helps to keep people employed. I am in favor of Corporate America making a profit and in their growth. What I am not in favor of is Big Corporations who invest millions of dollars in efforts that try to twist constitutional rights of our citizens in an effort to maximize Big Corporation profits. I am not in favor of Big Corporations who purchase legislators who sneak through legislation designed to protect Big Corporations to the detriment of citizens.
In case you missed it during the 2008 presidential primary news blizzard of the past few months, which has consumed the front page of newspapers nationwide, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has once again failed to protect the American public from harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs and devices. Choosing to protect the outrageous profits of the major drug manufacturers over the health and welfare of each of us, and after failing to gain the support of Congress in their quest to do so, the FDA went behind Congress’s back to President Bush to propose new rules concerning labeling requirements on drugs. In addition to the fact that important side effect information would be less likely to reach consumers under the proposed rule, the change would also permit companies to update their drug and device labels with new safety information without waiting for FDA approval.
According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Bausch & Lomb is involved in a lawsuit against its insurance companies arising out of the ReNu with MoistureLoc lawsuits. The Democrat reports that attorneys for the insurers maintain that Bausch knew about the problems with its ReNu with MoistureLoc causing infections to injured victims for “several months before the recall” and that any injuries were not accidents.
Is the phrase, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” in the constitution? Popular belief is yes, but it is not actually in the constitution. Rather, this phrase comes from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. It is probably a concept that should have been incorporated into the constitution and certainly Lincoln included it to remind citizens that it is their country. I think politicians, and even some of us, forget that it is OUR government and the politicians are OUR employees; they are supposed to be working in OUR best interests.
Business interests are fond of complaining about the jury system and regularly claim that it is “broken”, it needs to be “fixed”. Perhaps the best word is, in fact, “fixed”; they would like to fix the civil justice system so that it can be better influenced in their direction. Should we hold it against them because they work to achieve an unfair playing field? We should not hate Big Corporations for this, but should we allow them to achieve it? Absolutely not!
I think the jury system our founding fathers borrowed from English common law works just fine in protecting the rights of individual citizens. Frankly, I want six of my fellow citizens sitting and listening to evidence in my case. I want six regular people considering what makes sense and what does not make sense. I do not want a special panel appointed to hear my case, as has been promoted by many business “political parrots”. I do not want the government inserting itself into the civil justice system anymore than they already do. I trust an impartial panel of my fellow citizens to fairly weigh the evidence and reach a decision that makes sense.
With Nearly 47 million Americans or 16 percent of the population without health insurance, many are flocking to health food stores to either supplement or replace expensive prescription medication with herbal medicine. Advertising tells us that “natural” is better and “herbal” is safer. Why put “drugs” in your body when you can use a safe, natural product?
Dr. Saul Green, a biochemist and board member of the nonprofit US National Council against Health Fraud, notes: Natural doesn’t mean safe. You can find a dozen or more poisons that are totally natural. Although natural made from natural ingredients, herbal medicines can cause serious organ damage and their carcinogenicity is comparable to synthetic chemicals.
