The whole case is a crock.

She had failed a previous treatment with IM, and returned with persistent severe nausea. The plan was reasonable. The excecution was flawed. There was an error; it just wasn’t Wyeth’s error.

BTW, do you think if they’d just decided that the artery/vein thing was problematic enough that they’d have said stick to intramuscular?
How many amputations because of this accident sorta thing? A bunch.

I don’t think people are anti-plaintiff in this case. It is very tragic. ( Not so tragic, I am guessing, that the plaintiff’s attorney waived or reduced his gigantic fee. ) But she is already a wealthy woman as a result of this horrible situation. She has already cleaned out the insurance of at least three other defendants. Is there a point at which staggering compensation is too much compensation? Is there a point at which the lawayer’s contigency fee is too high? I didn’t think so.

This certainly won’t stop all future disasters. The idea that a different warning would have changed anything is absurd on the face of it. It will mean generic drugs like aspirin will cost hundreds of dollars a dose to offset the risk of a freak accident.

I would not mistake the NEJM for either the voice of opinion among typical doctors or for some sort of oracle of timeless truth. It seems to bear about the same relation to opinion among American doctors as the New York Times bears to opinion among Americans generally.

>This is a gut level anti plaintiff reaction from this blogger. Plaintiff wins=must be bad.

On the contrary, blogger White Coat in the original quote was upset because a useful medication was being withdrawn from the list available to him. That’s not a knee-jerk ideological reaction, that’s a thoroughly practical one.

I think you will find numerous doctor-bloggers who are not afraid to be critical of the pharmaceutical industry on all sorts of issues but who also fear, with open litigation season on the wording of labels, a rash of new contraindication labelings, black boxes and product withdrawals that will deny them access to therapies they find useful.

Thus, Sen. Chuck Schumer is nauseous, and after listening to him, I feel nauseated.

One of the commenters is arguing the merits of the case. The jury found the way they did. It has nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s decision.

I may need some ipecac.

—

I would just like to point out that the above statement is not entirely correct, as I have actually endured numerous interocular injections. (It’s not a procedure I recommend if you can avoid it, there is a point to that saying about better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick).

While injecting too much of any fluid into the eye cavity will cause blindness, whether permanent or temporary the procedure itself need not invariably do so. There are in fact medications approved for direct interocual administration. Over the five plus times I’ve experienced such treatments I have witnessed symptoms ranging from total blindness and excrutiating pain lasting about 45 minutes to very little visual degregation. It has always been extremely irritated afterward however.