Pain Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

December 31, 2021

As life expectancy falls, work is needed in 2022 on substance abuse and road safety

The government statistics paint a persistently grim picture of the nation’s health, notably as it is measured in a fundamental way — our plummeting, average life expectancy. But who wants to be another tragic bit of mortality data?

Can we resolve to stay healthier in the year ahead — especially by slashing the skyrocketing numbers of us who are dying on the roads and due to the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis?

The coronavirus pandemic led to surges, too, in excess alcohol consumption, which only increased during the holiday festivities.

December 21, 2021

Big Pharma slapped back in two separate tries at buck-raking

by Patrick A. Malone

Fortunately for desperate regular folks, Big Pharma doesn’t always carry the day with its rapacious schemes.

Just look at how a federal judge has upended a plutocratic family’s ploy to shield themselves from a wave of lawsuits over their company’s deceitful inundating of the country with powerful painkiller, or how public furor has pummeled a firm that wanted to charge nosebleed prices for a dubious prescription medication targeted at treating Alzheimer’s.

Officials from the District of Columbia and Maryland helped stymie the wealthy Sacklers from an ugly legal bargain in a multilbillion-dollar bankruptcy case involving the family-run Purdue Pharmaceuticals and thousands of lawsuits over the company’s OxyContin painkiller.

November 30, 2021

Ohio jurors fault big pharmacy chains for role in opioid drug crisis

by Patrick A. Malone

The regular folks who make up juries may give more heed than judges and justices do to the how and why of patients’ push for justice in the civil system, as has been shown in yet another bellwether decision involving major drug store chains and claims they contributed to the nation’s worsening opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis.

CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart all contributed substantially to creating a public nuisance by failing to ask appropriate questions and flooding Lake and Trumbull, two Ohio counties, with countless numbers of prescription painkillers, 12 jurors in a Cleveland court found after a six-week trial and 5½ days of deliberation. As the New York Times reported of the lawyers for the plaintiff counties and their successful argument, the “first time the retail segment of the drug industry has been held accountable in the decades-long epidemic….”

“After hearings in the spring, the trial judge will determine how much each company should pay the counties. The verdict — the first from a jury in an opioid case — was encouraging to plaintiffs in thousands of lawsuits nationwide because they are all relying on the same legal strategy: that pharmaceutical companies contributed to a “public nuisance,” a claim that plaintiffs contend covers the public health crisis created by opioids. The public nuisance argument was rejected twice this month, by judges in California and Oklahoma in state cases against opioid manufacturers. The judges found that according to the specifics of their own states’ public nuisance laws, the companies’ activities were too removed from the overdoses and deaths and that the laws had been applied too expansively.

November 24, 2021

With 100,000 deaths, 2021 shatters grim record in opioid crisis

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal officials have confirmed that 2021 will go in the record books as a calamitous time in the battle against the opioid painkiller abuse and overdose crisis, with more than 100,000 U.S. lives lost this year alone to a long-running public health nightmare.

In case anyone might suffer “compassion fatigue” or fail to see how unacceptable this mess has become, news articles in major media offered disconcerting contextual statements, including:

2021’s toll will be the highest of any single year in the crisis, which has killed more than 500,000 Americans over a decade

November 19, 2021

Opioid court cases offer hard evidence: Path to justice can be rocky

by Patrick A. Malone

Patients who say they were injured by wealthy corporations must possess great fortitude as they seek justice in the civil system, as has been reaffirmed by the courts in California and Oklahoma that rejected separate cases involving the harms of prescription painkillers.

All the parties in the two matters agreed that Big Pharma’s opioid drugs have killed a half million Americans over a decade, addicted and debilitated vast numbers of patients, and laid waste to communities across the country.

But in strict legal terms, a trial judge in Orange County, Calif., ruled that pharmaceutical giants would prevail in a lawsuit filed against them by aggrieved California counties. They claimed that, with opioids, “drug manufacturers misled both doctors and patients by downplaying the risks of addiction, overdose, death, and other health complications while overstating the benefits for long-term health conditions,” the Associated Press reported.

November 15, 2021

Biden nominates Robert Califf to reprise his Obama-era role as FDA chief

by Patrick A. Malone

Robert Califf, a cardiologist and President Biden’s “new” nominee to head the federal Food and Drug Administration, is a familiar face around the agency and Washington, D.C.

Califf served as the FDA commissioner before — winning U.S. Senate confirmation and holding the important post for the last year of the Obama presidency.

He is 70 and has long history in academic medical research and running clinical trials, including consulting for Big Pharma and giving his foes queasiness about his ability to run the nation’s top overseer of prescription medications and medical devices, as well as food quality and safety.

November 10, 2021

First six months of ’21 set U.S. record for road deaths

by Patrick A. Malone

2021 has become a torment for the safety of the nation’s roads, as the country between January and June hit its largest six-month percentage increase in fatalities in the half-century U.S. officials have kept such records.

In the first half of ‘21, 20,160 people died in vehicle wrecks — an 18.4% increase over the comparable period in the year before.

That six-month vehicular death toll, which only now is becoming official, also was the highest recorded in 15 years.

November 5, 2021

Women will receive more disclosures about risks of breast implants

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal regulators have toughened the requirements for surgeons and medical device makers to inform women in detail about rising risks associated with breast implants, which also now will carry the government’s sternest warning — a “black box” label cautioning about the products’ potential harms.

The implant alarms, announced after years of complaints by patients, include the Food and Drug Administration’s counseling women that implants carry significant complications and should not be considered long-lasting products, secure for extended periods after surgery. The agency also ordered manufacturers to disclose ingredients used to make the devices.

The FDA, which is seeking public comment on its new oversight, has issued a 22-page document that describes how doctors and makers should discuss with patients the risks of implants.

November 3, 2021

Health experts offer anti-drug strategy and fret over cigarette sales spike

by Patrick A. Malone

Americans have gotten stark reminders of the nation’s struggles with harmful substances and how the coronavirus pandemic has worsened these problems, with the Biden Administration outlining its strategy to combat the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis and Big Tobacco reporting a rare spike in cigarette sales.

The opioid crisis — which is sending the country toward a grim 100,000 fatalities this year alone — has forced the federal government into urgent steps, including “harm reduction” strategies as one of its four pillars of U.S. plans to combat drug abuse, according to Xavier Becerra, head of the Health and Human Services department.

Harm reduction approaches can be controversial, as critics assail them as officials going soft on law enforcement and criminal prosecution of drug use.

October 13, 2021

Nothing to see here? Consultant advises drug makers — and their regulators

by Patrick A. Malone

When Big Pharma gets jammed up by federal regulators overseeing what may be risky prescription drugs, what to do? How about hiring the help of a powerful, secretive business consulting company — which also happens to be advising the feds on how best to regulate drug companies?

That’s the gist of yet more disturbing findings about McKinsey and Co.’s sketchy dealings with Big Pharma and now the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The corporate consulting titan, though it was required to do so, failed over a decade to formally disclose its work for drug makers, including those involved in the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis, at the same time as it won big contracts with the FDA, according to excellent digging by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site.