The American Association for Justice (formerly known as the American Trial Lawyers Association) is up in arms over pre-emption. What else is new.
James V. DeLong, vice president of the Convergence Law Institute, writes about the immense pressure Congress will experience in the coming months from trial lawyers desperate to see the FDA stripped of its authority in exercising the power of pre-emption.
One of the more relevant excerpts from Mr. DeLong’s analysis of the rigorous FDA drug approval process is the following:
“First, drugs are powerful. That is why they work. That is also why they can do harm. Determining the potential effects, intended and otherwise, and then balancing the possibilities of good and harm is difficult, and taxes the capabilities of the medical and scientific communities. To think that the enterprise should then be repeated in every state in the form of a trial in front of lay judges and jurors is insane. This is not meant to insult juries -- Merck did win most of the Vioxx cases - but simple industrial efficiency dictates that the task should be done once, as well as we can do it. And Merck also paid almost $5 billion in settlement, money that could have been spent on drug research, or even to compensate the very limited number of people who were actually harmed by the drug.”
Somebody should send this to AAJ’s former president Kathleen Flynn Peterson.
Some may remember that Mrs. Flynn attacked CMPI last year after we issued our “Insta-Americans” study exposing the sordid ways in which trial attorneys mislead Americans on medical issues.
In particular, the report notes that google search results are “dominated by Web sites paid for and sponsored by either class action law firms or legal marketing sites searching for plaintiff referrals.”
Suffice it to say, AAJ’s then-president Kathleen Flynn Peterson was none to happy with the report. AAJ issued a press release declaring that our study is “laughable at best.”
Well, some might argue that the ATLA being re-named the American Association for Justice is not only ironic but also “laughable at best.”
AAJ’s work has very little to do with sound science or justice and everything to do with trial lawyers getting a big payday under the guise of securing justice for supposed victims of prescription drugs.
