Prempro lawsuit goes to the jury
October 10th, 2007 by Scott Thomas
After four weeks of testimony and a full day of closing arguments, jurors will begin deliberating this morning to decide whether pharmaceutical giant Wyeth is responsible for the breast cancer suffered by three Northern Nevada women who took the company’s hormone replacement drugs.
The jury also must decide whether Wyeth failed to adequately test their drugs Premarin, an estrogen replacement, and Prempro, a combination estrogen and progestin, before putting them on the market and whether it failed to warn doctors about the drugs’ risks.
“Wyeth didn’t do (breast cancer) studies because the results could be embarrassing and could be costly,” Zoe Littlepage, a lawyer for Jeraldine Scofield of Fallon, Arlene Rowatt of Incline Village and Pamela Forrester of Yerington, told the jury.
The company’s decision to produce, market and sell a dangerous product affected thousands of women, and the company should be held responsible, Littlepage said during her closing argument in Washoe District Court.
Wyeth lawyer Heidi Hubbard said microscopic analysis showed the cancers each of the three women suffered are different, and no one can say why they developed. But each woman had a list of risk factors that could have contributed to their diseases.
“So many women get breast cancer, and we don’t know to this day what causes it; and researchers are trying to find the cause so they can find the cure,” Hubbard said.
“This case is about a medication that’s an appropriate treatment option for many women,” she said. “To this day, (the drugs) are the most effective available for menopausal symptoms.”
Scofield, 75, Rowart, 67, and Forrester, 64, began taking hormone replacement drugs years ago to offset hot flashes and other discomforts associated with menopause. But when each developed breast cancer, they stopped the drugs and underwent treatment.
The lawyers for the three women, who have sat in the front row of the courtroom every day of the trial, said Wyeth knew there were links between their drugs and the cancers but ignored the dangers in favor of skyrocketing sales.
The warning labels the company put on the drugs sounded more like reassurances than alarms, Littlepage said. Doctors testified if they knew then what they know now about the breast cancer risks, they never would have prescribed the drugs long-term as the company promoted them, she said.
Dan Webb, another Wyeth lawyer, challenged those claims.
Wyeth helped sponsor or participated in 63 studies to look at whether hormone replacement drugs increased the risk of breast cancer, he said. When the results came in, the company followed a directive from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and created warning labels that detailed the risks, he said.
“The FDA knows more about research on drugs than the plaintiffs,” Webb said. “When (the women) say we didn’t properly test, it’s not true. Wyeth clearly understood the breast cancer risk and put it on the label.”
The women’s civil lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, but Littlepage told the jurors that they should look at how the company spent its money to promote the drugs when considering an appropriate amount. Those totals were in the millions of dollars.
October 10th, 2007