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Quotes about Product Liability from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"ATLANTA (CNN) - The medical journal BMJ Thursday retracted and apologized for the claim it made early this month that internal industry documents it received from an anonymous source had gone "missing" during a 1994 product liability suit against Eli Lilly and Co., maker of the antidepressant Prozac. The documents, cited by the journal in a Jan. 1 news article, suggest a link between fluoxetine—the generic name for Prozac—and suicide attempts and violence. The article said "the missing documents ..." - Gary Null and Amy McDonald, The Food-Mood Connection: Nutrition-based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing (Get the book.)

"One of the central issues to be proven in a product liability case is, could a product have been designed more safely, with less destructive effect on its user? The changes in Europe are suggesting a new means of answering that question. Derek Johnson, president of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, steered me to a case in 2005 that he and his fellow product liability attorneys followed with considerable interest, one involving an unrelated product: automobiles." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

"As a medical expert in product liability suits, I have had the opportunity to review this entire process for numerous psychiatric drugs. Inevitably, the drug company tries to make its product look more efficacious and safer than it really is, and with equal inevitability, the FDA repeatedly compromises its original critical concerns and caves in to drug-company interests." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"However, a Roche official testified in 2004 that the Roche marketing team argued against the report, stating that it could "impact on marketing strategy and product liability." What was going on here? Was selling a drug more important than helping people? My experience and my reading led me to the conclusion that it wasn't always about saving lives. It was also about making money, a lot of money, meaning billions of dollars. Behind that was millions of dollars of marketing to doctors and patients to convince them they needed the drug. And sometimes that corporate greed led to a lot of harm." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"However, I suspect that it will take the plaintiff's bar and the banner of product liability to bring reason and science to the forefront of the debate. If there is no other way, then so be it. So the cardiovascular industry has flowered. In 2001 more than 300,000 patients underwent a cabg in the United States at a cost of over $6 billion, and twice that number of angioplasties/stents were performed. Entrepreneurs, many with academic titles, hold sway. The ramifications are considerable, as will become clear in subsequent chapters." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Also, these contractual violations raise product liability questions which have not yet been addressed. The Milkweed reported in its June 2004 issue that numerous Posilac sales personnel had been fired, and that the industry-funded Hudson Institute's "Hit Squad" Milk is Milk website, attacking food biotechnology critics, had been terminated. Augusta, Georgia is home to the annual spring time Masters Golf Tournament and Posilac's hopeful future home. Monsanto's $180-million Posilac manufacturing plant opened there in May 2000, and signaled a move to a U.S." - Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., What's In Your Milk?: An Exposé of Industry and Government Cover-Up on the Dangers of the Genetically Engineered (rBGH) Milk You're Drinking (Get the book.)

"But each of these frantic attempts to plug a dire innovation gap has been rumbled: as scientists have argued publicly about safety studies, as patients have fought pricing and product liability suits, as US consumers have battled for cheap drug imports, and as citizens everywhere start to at least wonder what they are paying for and how the industry in its current form can survive. Even Sir Richard Sykes, former CEO of Glaxo Wellcome and now rector of Imperial College, London, wants change. He told the UK parliamentary inquiry, 'Today the industry has got a very bad name." - Jacky Law, Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (Get the book.)

"At the same time, it shapes important parts of the legal and medical landscape, such as consumer choice in health care and legal aspects of product liability. This pharmgov has reached its nadir in North America, where school children have up to 15 mandatory vaccination shots, and where President Bush has recently ordered a psychiatric audit of the whole adult population with the seeming intention of creating a massive mandatory market for psychiatric drugs. One aspect of the increasing power of the pharmaceutical companies is their ability to deflect criticism, however radical." - Martin J. Walker, HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim: The Unheard Voices of Women Damaged by Hormone Replacement Therapy (Get the book.) "The Company is involved in various legal proceedings, including product liability and environmental matters of a nature considered normal to its business, (author's italics.) The surrealism implicit in this statement becomes clear only when you go on to read about claims on the company in the matter of Pondimin and Redux, which are still being dealt with, and numbered initially 111,700.28 Of these, at the time of writing, 11,200 claims have been processed to completion. The 2003 report suggests that claims will continue to be brought until the year 2015." - Martin J. Walker, HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim: The Unheard Voices of Women Damaged by Hormone Replacement Therapy (Get the book.) "Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, disaster followed disaster, and in North America product liability cases were taken against a large number of drugs. Pharmaceutical marketing strategies became as secret as spy games in the Cold War. Hundreds of marketing, media and communications companies specialising in marketing drugs, science and the realities of illness and its treatment, have been involved in intense, large-scale, marketing battles." - Martin J. Walker, HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim: The Unheard Voices of Women Damaged by Hormone Replacement Therapy (Get the book.) "While men seem to objectify their illnesses, seeing them, as it were, as separate from them- 5 The social and moral conflicts that surround product liability litigation for compensation in North America are seriously and entertainingly discussed in two of John Grisham's novels: The King of Torts (NY: Doubleday; 2003) and The Runaway Jury (London: Arrow; 1996). We might also mention the brilliant A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr (NY: Vintage Books; 1996)." - Martin J. Walker, HRT Licensed to Kill and Maim: The Unheard Voices of Women Damaged by Hormone Replacement Therapy (Get the book.)

"It is seldom pursued unless driven by a product liability lawsuit. The fda relies, instead, on Phase III randomized controlled trials. They often recruit thousands of subjects, seek the statistical power to detect small difference in effectiveness, and last a year or so. Post-licensing, the agent can be prescribed to tens of thousands for many years. As with Baychol, it takes the appearance of only fifty tragedies from unique complications to spot the toxicity and assign its cause." - Nortin M. Hadler, The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System (Get the book.)

"Accutane could cause depression in some patients. The FDA received an edited report that did not include these concerns about depression. In 1988, based on the FDA's request, Roche included a warning regarding depression, psychosis, and rare suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and suicide. In 1999 Liam Grant, the father of an adolescent boy from Ireland who had killed himself after taking Accutane, contacted me after hearing about some of my research on brain imaging of patients with depression." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"Consumers are the ones experiencing the side effects and health problems, and they ultimately pay the price for litigation through higher insurance and product liability rates. This is also the reason why so many conventional doctors refuse to advise their patients about herbal supple- Consumers need to take extra care when supplementing with medicinal plants if they routinely take prescription drugs. merits and many just discourage their use altogether." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.)

"Not only has it been a problem to get doctors to testify against each other, but it has also been successfully argued that a given treatment was justified provided it was considered safe and effective at that time, even if it later turned out to be harmful and useless. 2. product liability suits. If you or any member of your family develops cancer following the use of or exposure to a carcinogenic product, then you have the basis for a product liability suit. The burden to prove your case is less for a food or drug than for other types of products, such as pesticides or paint strippers." - Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., The Politics of Cancer Revisited (Get the book.)

"He believed that a product liability statute had been violated. The manufacturer was sued for breach of an implied warranty that these sweeteners were "fit for ordinary use" (The Grand Rapids Press March 6, 1986 p. C-6). The following considerations are pertinent. • In arguing an alleged breach of implied warranty in product liability litigation, the plaintiff must prove that (1) a defect existed in the product alleged to have caused injury at the time the supplier parted possession with it, and (2) nothing altered the product following its sale." - H.J. Roberts, M.D., Aspartame (Nutrasweet) - Is It Safe? (Get the book.)

"These suits arose from product liability claims from thousands of patients claiming injury from the devices. The plaintiffs argued, among other things, that manufacturers sponsored "educational seminars" that were really sales events, which the plaintiffs likened to "Tupperware parties."15 Many of the suits against NASS were dismissed for lack of evidence, although suits against the manufacturers proceeded. In 1996, one manufacturer, AcroMed, agreed to a $100 million settlement for thousands of lawsuits, without acknowledging any liability." - Richard A. Deyo M.D. M.P.H., Donald L. Patrick, Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises (Get the book.)

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