In the United States, there are a significant amount of prescription drugs in the marketplace. As a result, it is critical to ensure that each drug is thoroughly tested for safety. Defective medication can produce severe side effects with some even being fatal. In June 2014, the Center for Disease Control estimated that more than 700,000 Americans a year are seen in hospital emergency rooms for adverse drug effects.
According to a January 2014 article on listtoptens.com, Johnson and Johnson is one of the largest American companies that specialize in manufacturing pharmaceutical products and medical devices in the United States. Their annual revenue is as high as $65.03 billion. The main complaint made on pharmaceutical companies is that now with modern technologies and innovative methods to produce drugs, there is a great struggle against competition to produce profits and production of the best drugs, which takes time away from complete testing.
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) objective is safeguarding consumers from defective medications through enforcing policies, guidelines, and standards for bringing drugs into the marketplace. One such policy is new medication undergoing clinical studies before being mass produced. Unfortunately many testing trials are affected by purposefully limited time frames. There is also the negative practice of using smaller control groups as opposed to one that is larger and more accurately diverse. The less diverse a group is, the fewer side effects identified. Some even purposefully screen the people taking the test for optimal results. Furthermore, such control groups rarely have minorities or females, skewing results even further.
If you or someone you know has been injured due to a defective or dangerous drug, contact an attorney at Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner by calling (713) 222-7211 or toll free at 713-222-7211.