Wall Street Journal Reports New England Journal of Medicine Sides with Plaintiffs on Preemption

As a follow up to my post at the end of this last week about preemption ( and yes, this is a really big issue as I see it so I post about it ALOT!), the Wall Street Journal reports that the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the most respected medical journal in the world, filed a "friend of the court" brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the Wyeth v. Levine case, supporting the position that preemption should not apply in pharmaceutical cases. Moreover, the NEJM argues that such lawsuits by injured plaintiffs are a "needed check to protect consumers from dangerous medicine." So even the doctors who prescribe medicines believe injured consumers should be permitted to sue pharmaceutical manufacturers even though the drug was approved for sale by the FDA. According to the Wall Street Journal, the NEJM signers say " its the first time that the full roster of current and former editors of the journal has come together on a court brief." The article goes on to discuss some interesting details regarding the brief filed on behalf of the NEJM:

The NEJM posse points to a string of problems with drugs as evidence that second-guessing the FDA is good public policy. In particular, they cite 23 drugs withdrawn from the market since 1997, including Merck’s Vioxx, Wyeth’s Redux and Pfizer’s Rezulin. “These examples demonstrate that the FDA alone cannot be the guarantor of drug safety,” the brief says. Click on the PDF icon to read the document.

In a particularly interesting twist, former NEJM editor Marcia Angell, for years the bane of trial lawyers, signed the NEJM brief supporting the rights of plaintiffs to press their cases. Angell had famously denounced junk science invoked in liability suits over breast implants in a book called “Science on Trial.” Though, we have to point out she more recently wrote a book blasting drugmakers: “The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us And What To Do About It.”

Lawsuits, she told the Health Blog, are now the only deterrent against misbehavior by drug companies because the FDA isn’t a reliable gatekeeper. “The FDA has been given over to the industry it regulates,” Angell said. Companies are “putting drugs on the market with insufficient evidence of safety, and keeping them there even where clear evidence of risk emerges — and the FDA has not take decisive or fast action.”

Here's hoping the Supreme Court gives due consideration to the thoughts of a highly respected and valued member of the medical community. When the one's who prescribe the medications are concerned about the power of the pharmaceutical industry over the FDA, it is indeed time to take note and do all that can be done to protect the injured consumer.