Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley concentrates on legal cases regarding defective products. A recent Boston Globe article announced that the Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency warned consumers that a drug psoriasis medicine called Raptiva was linked to four cases of a deadly brain infection.
According to the article, there have been three confirmed cases and one possible case of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopahy in patients taking Raptiva; three of those patients died.
The FDA issued a public health advisory concerning Raptiva because of the connection to the rare brain infection. PML is caused by a virus that affects the central nervous system. PML usually occurs in people whose immune systems have been severely weakened. It leads to an irreversible decline in neurologic function and death. Symptoms may include unusual weakness, loss of coordination, changes in vision, difficulty speaking and personality changes. There is no known effective prevention or treatment.
Andover Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley concentrates on legal cases regarding health issues in Boston. People have been using vitamin supplements for many years, but there is ongoing debate about their need or effectiveness, as evidenced by studies the past few years. A recent article in the New York Times cites Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Linus Pauling as one of the firs to promote megadoses of essential nutrients 40 years ago. Today, according to the article, about half of all adults use some form of vitamin supplement, at a cost of $23 billion a year.
Another recent study by the Women’s Health Initiative tracked eight years of multivitamin use among 161,000 older women. This study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine found that multivitamins did not lower the risk of heart disease or certain cancers, as earlier findings had shown. And another study that tracked 15,000 male physicians for ten years also reported no differences in cancer or heart disease rates among those using Vitamins E and C, compared to those not taking vitamins. A third study of 35,000 men found that high doses of vitamin E and selenium did not lower the risk of prostate cancer.
Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley concentrates on defective product liability law. He wants consumers to know about new evidence from the Federal Drug Administration, http://www.fda.gov, that says weight loss capsules called StarCaps, promoted as a natural dietary supplement, could be a health hazard.
According to an article in The Boston Globe, the FDA found the capsules contain a drug called bumetanide which can have serious side effects. The FDA has found that dozens of weight-loss supplements, most of them imported from China, contain potentially harmful drugs, that has resulted in consumer warnings and recalls from some distributors. The FDA calls a drug illegal if a weight-loss supplement contains an undeclared active pharmaceutical that can cause problems like elevating blood pressure or seizures, or could have toxic interactions with other medications and make it hard for doctors to diagnose the problem.
Another dietary supplement has come under investigation from the FDA. Venom Hyperdrive 3.0 contains sibutramine, a controlled substance with risks for abuse or addiction, and the FDA says it is a potent drug that poses safety risks for consumers.
A recent article points out the dangers of purchasing prescription drugs over the internet. As a Massachusetts attorney concentrating in personal injury law in Boston, Thomas M. Kiley wants people to be aware of the legal issues when purchasing drugs online.
In a news broadcast on MSNBC, a federal judge sentenced Jared Wheat, CEO of Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, to 50 months in prison for illegally selling knockoff prescription drugs over the internet. U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp also fined Wheat $50,000, and ordered him, the company and other individual defendants to forfeit $3 million in proceeds for illegally manufacturing popular lines of herbal dietary supplements.
In a plea bargain agreement, the defendants Wheat, Stephen D. Smith and Tomasz Holda, also sentenced to prison, admitted to operating a facility in Belize that made generic versions of drugs like Xanax, Valium, Ambien, Vioxx, Zoloft, Viagra, and Cialis, and selling them over the internet without prescriptions.
Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley concentrates in product liability law. The most talked about recall products right now are the peanut products produced by Peanut Corporation of America that are causing people to become sick from salmonella bacteria. The contaminated products are affecting not only the general public, but also food banks and schools.
A recent article in the New York Times, says that school lunch programs in California, Idaho, and Minnesota received peanut products that could have been tainted. The products they received were not on the first list of recalled products, but the recall list has since expanded.
The salmonella outbreak has affected 43 states (see http://www.msnbc.com for interactive map of states affected) and resulted in 1,313 products being recalled by the Federal Drug Administration. The outbreak has sickened at least 575 people and contributed to eight deaths.
As the public becomes more aware of imported products from countries which have less strict safety standards than the U.S., as indicated by the millions of recalled toys from China in the past year, the Federal Drug Administration wants consumers to beware of imported drugs as well. As a Massachusetts attorney concentrating on defective products liability cases, Thomas M. Kiley wants consumers to be aware of possible safety concerns from imported drugs.
The exact amount of imported drugs that come into the United States is hard to track, and the high volume makes it impossible to examine them all. The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations is working to uncover major black market pharmacy rings selling illegal pharmaceuticals.
The safety risks involve the use of prescription drugs without a physician’s supervision, and the danger of buying drugs of unknown origin and quality. The drugs could be old, contaminated, or counterfeit. The FDA warns against using unapproved drugs– just because a drug is approved in a foreign country, that doesn’t mean it’s approved in the United States. Drug standards and regulations vary from country to country and the FDA is responsible only for those marketed and sold inside the United States.
