If Big Pharma cared one iota about the unborn fetus, at a bare minimum, it would call off its hired-guns traveling around the country peddling SSRI antidepressants to pregnant women by convincing doctors to prescribe the drugs and ignore the studies and FDA warnings that say SSRIs are associated with serious birth defects.
Less than a month ago, on October 16, 2006, the first lawsuit in the nation was filed against GlaxoSmithKline in which an infant charges that his life-threatening lung disorder was caused by exposure to the SSRI Paxil in the womb during his mother's pregnancy.
Eric Jackson was born in Denver, Colorado on October 28, 2004, with persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN), a condition in which the infant's arteries to the lungs remain constricted after birth and limit the amount of blood flow to the lungs and oxygen in the bloodstream.
Immediately after birth Eric had to be placed on a ventilator and eventually had to be placed on an oscillating ventilator for a month.
In his 2 short years on earth, Eric has undergone two cardiac catherizations, and another procedure to combat gastral reflux caused from being on a ventilator for so long. Since birth, he has remained on oxygen and medications to help him breathe and he continues to suffer with eating and digestive problems.
With their lawsuit, Eric's parents hope to recover the medical and other expenses incurred in treating, and attempting to cure Eric's condition, as well as the related illnesses. Some of the related health problems may not even surface until Eric is a teenager.
A study in the October 3, 2006 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine by Dr Agnes Whitaker, MD, of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and colleagues, reported that low birth weight infants who require mechanical ventilation, with no obvious disability early on, can have subtle and cognitive deficits discernable at age 16.
The study sample represented a cohort of babies who were born at or admitted to one of three hospitals in New Jersey between September 1, 1984 and June 30, 1987.
The research team said, two factors, male gender and days of ventilation were predictors of motor problems. For each additional week of mechanical ventilation, they said, total and oral motor problem scores were higher by 0.33 and 0.14 points, respectively.
Legal analysts predict that Glaxo will attempt to reach early settlements with the families of infants born with birth defects because the company in no way wants injured toddlers paraded in front of a jury.
Karen Barth Menzies is one of Eric's attorneys. She is a partner at Baum Hedlund, a national pharmaceutical products liability law firm with offices in Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, where she heads the Pharmaceutical Antidepressant Litigation Department.
Ms Menzies has been waging legal battles against the SSRI makers on behalf of injured consumers for more than a decade and she currently represents many other families in Paxil birth defect cases
Jennifer Liakos is an associate attorney at Baum Hedlund in Los Angeles, and she is also a member of the firm's Pharmaceutical Antidepressant Litigation Department, handling Paxil birth defect cases. She explains that between 10% to 20% of babies born with PPHN do not survive, even when they receive treatment.
Having been the leader in the Paxil litigation against Glaxo for years now, and through their intensive litigation and discovery, Baum Hedlund has evidence that reveals specifics relating to Paxil and birth defects. Eric's attorneys do not have to newly learn the inter-workings of Glaxo because they know how the company operates regarding Paxil and how they analyze or fail to analyze data.
According to Ms Menzies, studies have shown that infants who are exposed to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs), after the 20th week of gestation are more likely to develop PPHN than infants who were not exposed to an SSRI during pregnancy.
In addition to Paxil, the other SSRIs sold in the US include Prozac by Eli Lilly; Zoloft, from Pfizer; Celexa and Lexapro, from Forest Laboratories; and Luvox, from Solvay. Wyeth markets Effexor, a serotonin-norepinephrine inhibitor.
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