› $4.85 Billion settlement in drug case
Drug maker Baxter International Inc., shelled out more than $720,000 in the third quarter of the year lobbying on health care issues including government reimbursement for kidney dialysis treatment and increased funding for kidney disease education, according to Forbes/Associated Press.
Despite heparin-recall woes earlier in the year, Pharmaceutical drug giant Baxter International announced that it had a 19 percent increase in third-quarter profits, according to a Baxter International press release.
Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that could decide whether people harmed by prescription drugs could recover damages for their injuries by suing in state courts. The pharmaceutical industry argues that manufacturers whose drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be protected from liability, according to the Natural News.
Tainted batches of heparin may have raised concerns with the general public, but a recent Reuters report suggests the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would rather focus on giving product promotion advice to companies and journal reprints to physicians than food and drug safety scares.
Attorneys who take on the pharmaceutical industry as a voice for consumers injured by medications found an unlikely ally this week, in doctors. Noting that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is often “overwhelmed” by drug safety problems ranging from serious side effects to unsafe manufacturing facilities, editors of the New England Journal of Medicine said patients benefit from information uncovered by attorneys during liability investigations, according to an Associated Press report released Friday.
