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Hormone Replacement Therapy
(HRT)
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First U.S. Trial in Hormone
Replacement Therapy Lawsuits Against Drug Manufacturers
Scheduled for July in Little Rock.
5,000 Breast Cancer Survivors
Have Filed Suits Claiming HRT Caused Their Disease
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Monday, U.S. District Court Judge William R. Wilson set the
first of 5,000 cases alleging that hormone replacement
drugs cause breast cancer for trial in Little Rock,
Arkansas on July 31.
Morgan & Weisbrod, L.L.P. represents long-time Little Rock
resident Helene Rush, 71, one of thousands of breast cancer
victims who have sued Wyeth, Pfizer and other hormone drug
manufacturers. Ms. Rush is one of two bellwether plaintiffs
whose trials were chosen by Judge Wilson to be set for July
31. The other plaintiff in the first bellwether trial is 67
year-old Arkansas resident Linda Reeves who is represented by
Jim Morris, an attorney with the Provost Umphrey law firm in
Beaumont, Texas.
Both women allege that combination estrogen/progesterone
replacement drugs caused their breast cancer. |
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Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
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Rush began taking hormone replacement therapy in 1989 and stopped in the
summer of 1999 after being diagnosed with cancer in her right breast.
The dangers of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) became national headline
news in July of 2002 when the National Institutes of Health stopped the
Women's Health Initiative (WHI), a major study of 16,608 women because the
group taking a combination of estrogen and progesterone showed: a 26%
increased risk of breast cancer; a 22% increased risk of heart disease; a
29% increased risk of heart attack; and a 41% increased risk of stroke,
compared with the control group. Since that time, numerous additional
studies in the United States and Europe have underscored the risk of HRT,
shown the increased risk of breast cancer to be even greater and shown the
benefits to be minor by comparison.
"Our position is clear," said Les Weisbrod, Morgan & Weisbrod, L.L.P.'s
managing partner. "For a long time, the makers twisted the science and
suppressed the evidence of the true extent of the risk of these drugs
while vastly overplaying the benefits."
Prior to the release of the WHI results, Wyeth's Prempro was one of the
top-selling drugs in the United States with over $1 billion in annual
sales. After the WHI study came out, Prempro sales were cut almost in
half, according to Weisbrod. Weisbrod said, "Wyeth is now engaged in a
major marketing campaign with TV ads touting 'Go low with Prempro' in an
effort to increase the sales of this dangerous drug which is still on the
market. Women should know that for years Wyeth marketed this as a drug
doctors should get women on and keep them on for life without ever doing
any long-term testing which would have shown the high breast cancer risk
for long-term use."
In addition, Weisbrod says, "It is now clear that Wyeth marketed this drug
as having a heart protective benefit when it did not. Moreover, the FDA
had not approved Prempro for cardiovascular benefit, so this was illegal,
off- label promotion." According to Weisbrod there were a number of
letters from the FDA to Wyeth instructing them to stop this off-label
promotion. On February 25, 1991, one FDA letter to Wyeth included the
following language: "We view this campaign in is entirety to be a form of
extremely insidious hidden persuasion."
Although the HRT lawsuits have not gotten as much attention as the Vioxx
lawsuits, this drug actually may effect more consumers.
The fact that Judge Wilson chose to preside at two of the HRT lawsuits
originating within his district is part of a trend in which federal
jurists chosen to handle Multi-District Litigation (MDL) take on a few of
the cases instead of referring all of them to their districts of origin,
according to Weisbrod. This is very similar to the way in which the Vioxx
lawsuits are being handled under the consolidated proceedings in the MDL
in federal court in New Orleans.
SOURCE Morgan & Weisbrod, L.L.P.
Megan Duran, +1-214-219-9191, for Morgan & Weisbrod, L.L.P. |
| This
page is dedicated to
Hormone Replacement Therapy. The information
is derived from believed to be reliable government sources
and is not meant to be medical advice. |
Hormone
Replacement Therapy
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