Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

Chantix sales in this country have fallen 49% percent, Pfizer reported last week. However, internationally, sales jumped 60 percent. This report comes as the FDA said it may need to upgrade warnings on Chantix after increasing reports of road-traffic accidents and seizures involving people on Chantix. Chantix already has been linked to serious psychiatric side effects such as depression and suicidal ideations and behavior. Last year, the Chantix label warning was strengthened for suicide, although Pfizer claims that the symptoms are not from Chantix but from nicotine withdrawal itself.

In making the Fort Pinto, engineers discovered before the Pinto was placed into the market that rear-end collisions would rupture the Pinto's fuel system extremely easily. Although Ford owned a patent on a much safer tank, Ford made the cost-benefit analysis that compared the cost of an $11 repair against the cost of paying off potential lawsuits.

Ford put all of this in writing, leading to a spate of punitive damage awards. Naturally, no one puts this kind of stuff in writing anymore. That was the lesson of the Ford Pinto litigation.

But plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the same unwritten calculus keeps drugs like Chantix, Seroquel, and Avandia on the market. The manufacturers of the drugs know the likelihood is that lawyers are going to continue to file lawsuits and these cases are going to eventually settle. The question is whether the costs of defending these cases and paying settlements and verdicts (not to mention the bad will that comes with every lawsuit) is worth the profits received from the drug.

Having said that, let me back step just a bit. I’m not suggesting that Chantix is the same thing as the Ford Pinto because not everyone at Pfizer believes that Chantix is a bad drug. I’ve defended a number of big pharmaceutical companies. I’m not suggesting everyone involved in the manufacturing of Chantix (or Serqouel and Avandia, two other heavily litigated drugs that are under siege and still on the market) are engaging in this raw, void of humanity, cost-benefit decision making process.

I know that within Pfizer there are decent people who believe in good faith that Chantix is a good drug because it is helping people quit smoking. (GlaxoSmithKline actually says Chantix is not efficacious, which is ironic because I’m grouping Glaxo’s Avandia in with Chantix). But if you think plaintiffs’ lawyers are biased, talk to the people who have staked out careers and reputations on the safety and success of a drug.