Zantac Lawsuit

Zantac Lawsuit

Researching drug company and regulatory malfeasance for over 16 years
Humanist, humorist

Friday, December 22, 2017

Merry Christmas to All




Something I penned many years ago.

A family friend did the artwork.
For Krissy




Merry Christmas!

Thanks for reading folks!

Bob Fiddaman



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Monday, December 18, 2017

GSK's Attorney Labels His Failure An "Accomplishment"



King & Spalding's top asshat asset, Andrew Bayman (above), was featured last week in a special interview on the legal-based website Law360. His interview, as you would imagine, is seen as a massive PR exercise for the firm he works for and also the firm he represents in litigation, GlaxoSmithKline.

Bayman, along with his co-defender Todd Davis, were in action earlier this year in the Dolin Vs GlaxoSmithKline trial in Chicago, a trial which saw them roundly trounced by the legal team of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, PC and Rapoport Law Offices, P.C.

In his summation to the jury Bayman uttered the immortal words, "Don’t you think if these medicines caused suicide someone would have spoken up?"

Hmm, the jury returned a verdict against the company he was representing yet, according to his interview with Law360, he sees this as a personal victory.

Law360 put Bayman in the spotlight by claiming, "King & Spalding LLP's Andrew Bayman helped limit GlaxoSmithKline's damages to $3 million in a closely watched federal trial over the company's liability for the suicide of a Reed Smith LLP partner who used a generic version of Paxil, landing him among Law360's 2017 Product Liability MVPs."

Law360 asked Bayman what he thought his biggest accomplishment was this year. He cites the Dolin trial as his biggest 'accomplishment.'
"We knew it was a very challenging case. We knew there was a risk of a really big verdict, given his earnings and his age," he said. "The company felt so strongly about its legal position that it said we're going to try this case, knowing that there was a huge risk of a very large verdict."
Hang on a minute, didn't Bayman lose the case?

Why is he singing from the rafters about such failure? Why is that failure his own biggest accomplishment this year? He must lead an unaccomplished life considering he defines his Dolin Vs GlaxoSmithKline failure as a success.

On the pharmaceutical industry, Bayman believes that big pharma "have created medicines that have changed people's lives."

He's right. Just ask Wendy Dolin how her life has changed after her husband took paroxetine. Ask her kids and Stewart's friends how much their lives have changed, too.

Bayman continued by praising the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry.

"In the past", he said,"before they had these drugs, people were not able to get out of bed and lead normal lives." 

During the trial of Dolin Vs GlaxoSmithKline, Bayman was jumping up and down like a jack-in-the-box, almost objecting to everything the plaintiff team wanted to tell or show the jury. Bayman didn't, it seemed, like any visuals, none more so than the following that was shown to the jury.


The above visual showed the jury how 22 adults had died during paroxetine clinical trials, all but two had died by suicide, all of whom were taking GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil at the time of their death. So, Mr. Bayman, there are 22 people here who can't get out of bed and lead normal lives, 20 of them killed themselves after ingesting Paxil, a drug that certainly did change the course of their lives.

Bayman told Law360, "I don't have any engineering background. I don't have any chemistry background," he said. "That in some ways has been an advantage, because I tell my experts, if you can't explain this to me, we're not going to be able to explain it to a jury who doesn't have a technical background."

So, the defense experts at the Dolin trial didn't explain their points to the jury correctly then? Or perhaps those experts weren't managed well by Bayman and co?

On giving advice to young product liability attorneys, Bayman told Law360, "There are different issues that you see in product liability litigation, and someone who has deep expertise can be particularly valuable." 

 Nice of him to pay homage to Brent Wisner of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, PC.

The Law360 article is here.

Bayman's biggest accomplishment this year can be seen in the links below.

Bob Fiddaman
Coverage of Bayman's biggest accomplishment

Dolin v GSK - Opening Arguments

Dolin Vs GSK - Day Two - "Jack-In-The-Box"

Dolin vs GSK - Healy 'Rocks Da House'

Dolin Vs GSK - JP Garnier Video Deposition

Dolin Vs GSK - The Dunbar Tape

Dolin Vs GSK - Day 4 - Slam Dunk

Dolin Vs GSK - 8.9 Suicide Increase For Adult Paxil Users

Dolin Vs GSK - Day 6 - Ass Kicking Semantics

Dolin Vs GSK - Day 7 - Abraham Lincoln

Dolin Vs GSK - Day 8 - Get to the Point, Todd!

Dolin Vs GSK - Glenmullen Nails It!

Dolin Vs GSK - "Babes"

Dolin Vs GSK - Wendy's Cross and GSK's Petition

Dolin Vs GSK - Robert "Bling Bling" Gibbons

Dolin Vs GSK: Suicide Prevention Warning "Futile", Claims GSK Exec

Dolin Vs GSK: Jury shown List of the Dead in Paxil Clinical Trials

Dolin Vs GSK: Last Man Standing & The Return of Dr. Healy

Dolin Vs GSK: Closing Arguments

Dolin Vs GSK - The Verdict

Exclusive: Interview With Wendy Dolin

From Chicago to New York - The Legacy of Stewart Dolin

Dolin Wins...Again

 Dolin Vs GSK: Personal Vendetta or Bigger Picture?




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Monday, December 11, 2017

British Medicines Watchdog Announce New Partnership




First off, watch the short announcement from the MHRA's CEO, Dr. Ian Hudson.



He looks almost apologetic, don't you think? Either that or he is embarrassed?

Before taking his role as CEO of the British Medicines Watchdog (MHRA), Hudson was the agency’s licensing director, responsible for the majority of its medicines licensing activities. Prior to that, he was the World Safety Officer for GlaxoSmithKline. He can be seen here defending Paxil, also known as Seroxat, (under oath) during a one-hour video deposition that was aired during the Tobin Vs GlaxoSmithKline case. A case which saw the Jury return a verdict against GlaxoSmithKline and, indeed, Paxil. (Fig 1)


Fig 1



Who Are The Gates Foundation?

Better known as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it was launched in 2000 and one of its primary aims is to "enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty."

What Are They Currently Involved In?

Well, aside from teaming up with the MHRA and having a say on the safety monitoring of medicines in low and middle-income countries, they are also embroiled in serious issues regarding a vaccine study they sponsored that was carried out in India in 2009.

Bill and Melinda's foundation funded the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) to carry out the studies in which 5 young girls died after receiving the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, manufactured by Merck.

According to The India Times, "...consent for conducting these studies, in many cases, was taken from the hostel wardens, which was a flagrant violation of norms. In many other cases, thumbprint impressions of their poor and illiterate parents were duly affixed onto the consent form. The children also had no idea about the nature of the disease or the vaccine "

In 2015, Judges in India's Supreme Court demanded answers regarding the violations. An investigation carried out by the British newspaper, The Daily Mail, found that "children as young as nine suffered side-effects after being used as unwitting human guinea pigs for the new drug."

The Daily Mail adds:
An investigation by an Indian parliamentary committee had previously concluded that the trials amounted to a serious breach of trust and medical ethics amounting to child abuse and 'a clear cut violation of the human rights of these girl children and adolescents'.
The committee's report said it had been established that clinical trials of the vaccines had been carried out 'under the pretext of an observation/demonstration project' in violation of all laws and regulations laid down by the government for such trials.
GSK is also embroiled in the controversy. Shortly after the Gardasil debacle, two more deaths were reported from Vadodara, Gujarat, where tribal children were also vaccinated with another brand of HPV vaccine, GSK's Cervarix.

Earlier this year, things got so bad that India's health ministry decided to take over funding responsibility for the immunization program backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The reason? "A possible conflict of interest arising from the foundation's tied to pharmaceutical companies." (Business Standard)

MHRA

So now, we seem to have gone full circle with today's MHRA announcement from Dr. Ian Hudson, who claims...
"We are delighted to be involved in such an important global initiative. New drugs and vaccines are being brought to the market for the first time in public health programmes in settings where the safety monitoring and regulatory systems need strengthening. The expertise we can bring to the project will help national safety monitoring centres identify risks and benefits early and take appropriate regulatory action to support global health."
So, let's get this straight. Bill and Melinda Gates funded an immunization program in India. That program kills a number of children and the protocol was found to be 'a clear-cut violation of the human rights of children'. Next, Ian Hudson, the former World Safety Officer at GSK, announces that Bill and Melinda Gates will be teaming up with the MHRA to strengthen "the safety monitoring and regulatory systems."

Someone pinch me.

If this hasn't got you thinking outside of the box, ladies, and gentlemen, then maybe this will?

An article published in 2012 entitled, 'The Gates Foundation connection to the Glaxo drug fraud scandal', is a fascinating read. It highlights, amongst many things, that Tachi Yamada, former head of global health for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was formerly the head of research and development for GSK.

Yamada, while he was head of global health for the Gates Foundation, was accused in a U.S. Senate hearing of bullying a scientist to not publish negative findings of a GSK diabetes drug called Avandia. The same drug that Glaxo failed to report important data to the FDA showing that it increased heart risks in patients by 43%. Despite agreeing to a misdemeanour count in 2012, GSK still maintains "the civil settlement is not an admission of any liability or wrongdoing in the selling and marketing of Avandia." However, they agreed to pay $3 billion imposed on them by The Department of Justice for failure to report Avandia safety data.

I'm sure Ian Hudson knows of the links between GSK and the Gates Foundation. Probably why his announcement (in the video at the top of this post) looks like it's being delivered by someone who has soiled his underpants. Either that or he has become nauseous after being trapped in the incestuous revolving door at the MHRA!

Bob Fiddaman












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Friday, December 08, 2017

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention... A teaser






Pretty soon I'll be highlighting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) on this blog.

The AFSP have been exposed by many before. I will be focusing on their online Digital Memory Quilt, whereby they invite relatives to post photos of loved ones who have fallen to suicide. There are, of course, restrictions, one being that nobody is allowed to mention any medications the suicide victim may have been taking at the time of their deaths. However, that's a future post.

In the meantime here are some tweets I've sent the AFSP tonight:










COMING SOON

The Suicide Quilt that Stifles Voices


Bob Fiddaman




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