The prescription drug Actos has been known for some time to increase a patient's risk of developing bladder cancer over the course of their diabetes treatment. Most of the Actos cases we handled on patients' behalf are long since resolved, but lately we have noticed an uptick in calls from people scrambling to file suit...
I'm sure we've all seen or heard ads with a stern-voiced lawyerly looking actor telling us about the dangers of a particular drug. They're pretty standard fare on mid-afternoon and late-night television. In recent months, a slew of ads targeting the drug Invokana, a diabetes medication, aired on stations around the country. These commercials usually...
Most people take for granted that when a defectively designed or dangerous product hurts people, the manufacturer can be held accountable for releasing that product into the marketplace. Most people appreciate (and all enjoy) the fact that our country's products laws place a burden on manufacturers to create safe products. Nevertheless, a fairly significant minority...
What are Risperdal and Invega? Risperdal is the trade name attached to the medication risperidone, a powerful "atypical antipsychotic" medication designed primarily to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and irritability caused by autism. Invega, a metabolite of Risperdal, is in the same family of medications. It is the brand name for paliperidone. Both drugs are manufactured...
It can cost upwards of a billion dollars, start to finish, to put a new drug on the market. First, there's all the research and testing, tweaking the chemistry until it is demonstrably able to treat one or more health problems. Once that's done, the finished product has to go through clinical trials. It then...
A common prescription for mothers-to-be is a powerful antiemetic (a nausea control agent) called Zofran. It has been putting corks in people's urges to vomit since 1991, and was hailed for many years as a "godsend." More recently, however, research has shown that Zofran use can have extremely harmful effects on a developing fetus. Too...
What is Abilify? Abilify is the brand name of the drug aripiprazole. Created by the Japanese company Otsuka Pharmaceutical, it is marketed in North America by Otsuka America and their partner company Bristol Myers-Squibb, an enormous biopharmaceutical manufacturer/marketer. In 2015 alone Abilify pulled in six billion dollars' worth of revenue for these companies. The medication's...
All the product names used in this article are real. Truth is stranger than fiction. You see them at gas stations all the time and scoff at their ridiculous names--"Rhino 7." "Super Samurai-X." "Mojo Risen." The products often feature a passionate couple or some "powerful" animal on the packaging, though sometimes they go a little...
We were originally going to let this one slide, because so-called "male enhancement supplements" are junk products with no scientific backing whatsoever. However, last Wednesday, all Rhino 7 3000, both the regular and the platinum capsules were recalled by Premiere Sales Group. This wouldn't be all that newsworthy if there wasn't also a recall of...
On Friday, October 30th, a voluntary recall was issued for all Auvi-Q epinephrine injectors on the market, due to issues with improper dosage. In some cases the injectors failed to deliver any epinephrine at all. These devices are used by people suffering acute allergic reactions, or anaphylaxis. In an emergency, the devices may fail to...