Drugs/Medical Legal News Articles & Interviews

Fort Saskatchewan, AB: How can a heavy metal accumulate in the brain but not be considered harmful? After undergoing seven MRI scans, all with injections of a gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA), Wanda Milley experienced the same gadolinium contrast dye side effects that many other patients have suffered, and have subsequently filed gadolinium lawsuits.

Atlanta, GA Judge Richard W. Story has now identified ten bellwether Ethicon Physiomesh lawsuits that will likely shape the multidistrict litigation pending in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia. Trials in these hernia mesh lawsuits are now scheduled to begin in April 2020. But there will be plenty to watch even before opening statements begin.

Buffalo, NY: Many reports of adverse side events associated with gadolinium contrast dye, along with recent data showing that gadolinium deposits in the brain and other organs have spurred researchers to find imaging approaches that don’t need gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs).

Washington, DC:The drug manufacturer Gilead announced in May that it was making an annual donation of 2.4 million bottles of Truvada that is prescribed as a prophylactic to prevent the spread of HIV, also known as PrEP. Some lawmakers, however, suspect that the donation comes with strings attached.

Washington, DC: The FDA in December 2017 recommended that repeated use of MRIs with gadolinium contrast dye be minimized wherever possible, and when MRIs are taken closely together in particular. It’s like a Catch-22: an MRI can detect cancer but it can also pose certain risks -- is it better to be safe than sorry?

Dallas, TX: Johnson & Johnson has come up with $1 billion dollars to settle as many as 95 percent of the 6,000 lawsuits filed by patients who needed to have metal-on-metal Pinnacle hip implant devices removed due to severe pain. This amount includes a prior settlement for over $400 million.

Philadelphia, PA: The FDA has finally ordered the last two medical device companies selling transvaginal mesh products to pull them from the market. The agency said it is “committed to patient safety” but hundreds of thousands of women –victims of surgical mesh--would disagree. And the lawsuits are still pouring in.

Boulder, CO: Nicole had over two dozen MRI’s with gadolinium contrast dye before she discovered the risks and side effects associated with this heavy metal – side effects the FDA has known of since at least 2007, when it slapped a black-box warning on all gadolinium-based contrast agents for MRI, detailing an increased risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis with kidney-disease patients.

Tallahassee, FL: Shirley had abdominal mesh implanted following the resection of colon cancer. That was in 2008 and she has been in debilitating pain ever since. And taking Oxycodone to numb the crippling abdominal pain not only resulted in an addiction to opioids; she had to give up her job as a federal prison officer. Wait, it gets worse: her surgeon said all the mesh cannot be removed because it has eroded into her bowel.

New Orleans: Thousands of patients who took Xarelto have settled, through multi-district litigation, with Johnson & Johnson and Bayer for three quarters of a billion dollars. Plaintiffs allege that the manufacturers marketed the drug to physicians to prevent blood clots, but failed to inform them of Xarelto side effects, which could cause life-threatening complications such as internal bleeding, stroke and death.