Thursday, March 04, 2010
Paxil, one of the nation’s leading anti-depressant medications, has cost its manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, nearly $1 billion in damages from numerous lawsuits since the drug first became available in 1992.
The review and approval process by the Food and Drug Administration that allowed Paxil to go on the market did not foresee problems the drug would cause for pregnant women, many of whom gave birth to children with serious health defects. Glaxo’s legal troubles aren’t expected to get any easier, as more than 600 other lawsuits involving Paxil and birth defects are waiting to be resolved.
Some of the earlier settlements have resulted in Glaxo paying out an average of $4 million to plaintiffs. After the conclusion of one case, jurors said they decided against the pharmaceutical company in part because it did not bother to do enough testing on the effects of Paxil.
The FDA did not reclassify Paxil as a medication potentially dangerous to pregnancies until 2005.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Paxil Birth Defect Trial: Battle of the Experts (by Evelyn Pringle, Natural News)
Paxil Birth Defect Litigation – First Trial A Bust for Glaxo (by Evelyn Pringle, Public Record)
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