Whistle-blower suit against Bayer over unsafe drug can continue: Court

By Judy Greenwald A whistle-blower lawsuit against Bayer A.G. alleging it knowingly sold an unsafe drug to the Department of Defense can proceed based on the precision of its allegations, an appeals court has ruled. Units of Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer began marketing Baycol to compete with other cholesterol-lowering or statin drugs in early 1998, according to Tuesday's ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis in In re: Baycol Products Litigation. Certain studies concluded that the drug was less effective at lowering cholesterol than competing drugs when prescribed at the dosage initially approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Bayer then sought and obtained FDA approval to sell it at higher dosage levels. But doctors began to report that patients taking the drug developed rhabdomyolysis, a rare but serious muscle disorder that breaks down muscle fibers and releases myoglobin into the bloodstream, and that the likelihood of the disorder appeared to increase when taken at the higher dose level or conjunction with another cholesterol-lowering drugs. Bayer voluntarily withdrew the drug from the market in August 2001, according to the ruling. Whistle-blower suit filed in 2006 Laurie Simpson, who worked at Bayer from 1998 through 2004 as a market research manager, filed a whistle-blower suit in October 2006, charging in part that Bayer fraudulently induced the Department of Defense to enter into two contracts to buy the drug for members of the ...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs