Drug companies are now facing lawsuits against them and the sellers over generic heart medications that may contain carcinogens.
Millions of Americans have taken generic heart medication drugs which are at the border of a scandal to recall them, they were not properly studied for decades by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Approximately 50 lawsuits are at the hands of an attorney who told a U.S. federal court he expects a surge of legal action. He also has more than 27 patients/plaintiffs who are accusing the drug makers of contracting cancer.
Attorney Daniel Nigh fiord 12 lawsuits so far, and he has told the judges in a US District Court in NJ, according to a transcript: “My best estimate sitting here today is I expect that we will have approximately 2,000 personal-injury cases on file in the next two years”.
Recalls
The FDA has been working on recalling such heart medications since July 2018 and mentioned that the pills might have been contaminated with NDMA for as long as four years before the problem was found.
Explanation
Valsartan has been contaminated by a carcinogen NDMA manufactured by Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceuticals, which is also targeted in the lawsuits. This was sold to major drug companies and has been used as an ingredient in other popular cardiovascular therapies. Amongst them, there are more drug makers in the complaints, such as generic Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and Mylan NV, as well as CVS Health Corp.
Over 30 defendants are involved in the lawsuit as shares of Zhejiang Huahai lost approximately 2.5 percent on Wednesday in China.
Contamination
In 2018 alone, 1.5 million people in the United States took contaminated Valsartan.
Senior U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler told the lawyers at the March 2019 meeting that proving that these drugs caused cancer to the plaintiffs may be a challenge: “There’s a number of people who claim, I understand, that they’ve contracted cancer from taking this drug, it’s probably going to be a heavy lift to prove that, but you know, we’ll see what happens.”
