According to the findings of a new report, many drug manufacturing companies devote more resources to promoting their medications than they do to actually researching the drugs to make sure they are effective and safe for consumer use. In the report, published last week by BBC News, researchers indicated that in 2013, most major drug companies spent twice as much money on marketing than on research and development – a statistic that raises serious concerns about the possibility of potentially dangerous medications being made available to the public without being adequately tested. If you were prescribed an allegedly defective pharmaceutical drug in the past, and you have since suffered a major side effect or complication, our consumer advocates at the Consumer Justice Foundation can help put you in touch with an experienced product liability lawyer today.
This eye-opening report comes as many major drug manufacturing companies, like Johnson & Johnson, are facing product liability lawsuits filed on behalf of consumers who claim to have suffered injuries from their medications. According to allegations raised in these drug injury lawsuits, pharmaceutical companies are putting their desire for large profits ahead of consumer safety by intentionally concealing dangerous side effect information, which may contradict their drug marketing claims. Johnson & Johnson, for example, spent $17.5 billion last year on marketing its various medications, according to the report, but spent only $8.2 billion on research and development, which resulted in $13.8 billion in profits for the drug maker in 2013 alone.
The anticoagulant drug Xarelto was one of the medications examined in the report, due to the fact that J&J’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals subsidiary aggressively marketed the drug as a superior alternative to warfarin, a blood thinner that has been on the market for decades. According to marketing claims made by Janssen in the past, Xarelto is easier to use than warfarin because it requires less patient monitoring during treatment. However, a growing body of research has indicated that Xarelto actually requires regulator blood monitoring during treatment, in order to reduce the risk of uncontrollable bleeding from Xarelto. In fact, it has come to light recently that, because there is currently no approved antidote for Xarelto, there is no way for doctors to reverse the blood thinning effects of the drug in the event of an internal bleeding event, putting patients at risk for death.
According to the findings of an independent research published in the Journal of Cardiology last month, had Janssen provided doctors with instructions on how to properly monitor Xarelto treatment, patients at risk for uncontrollable bleeding problems could have been identified, and serious injuries and/or fatalities could have been avoided. In addition to Johnson & Johnson, a number of other major drug companies were outed in the BBC News report, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly, who are responsible for manufacturing blockbuster medications like Viagra, Lipitor and Paxil. If you believe you have been adversely affected by side effects of Xarelto or another potentially dangerous medication, contact a knowledgeable drug injury lawyer today to explore your possible compensation options.
[box type=”note” align=”aligncenter” ]Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223?[/box]
