The term “drug wars” often refers to violent cartels which bully, bribe and slaughter in the name of  illegal drug profits. But another drug war is assailing America, and no machine guns are used. Rather, it’s a war inflicted by huge pharmaceutical companies — often foreign-based — which knowingly sell deadly, defective drugs for years while reaping monstrous profits.

Take GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical giant whose negligence with deadly drugs seems to know no limits. GSK’s latest revealed outrage concerns diabetes medication Avandia, which carries a high risk of causing heart attacks. According to a recent New York Times investigation, GSK knew of this risk for 11 years yet covered it up, continuing to peddle its defective drug even though people were dying as a result.

In short, GSK knew it was killing people and did so anyway, all in the name of money.

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A year and a half ago, the heparin overdose of actor Dennis Quaid’s twins was big news. The legal settlement just announced in the case isn’t as big of a news story to most media, but it’s also very significant.

The Associated Press reports that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has offered a $500,000 settlement in the case, which the Quaids have accepted. Half of that money will go to each of the twins: Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone. Also, Cedars-Sinai will pay for any additional medical care the Quaid twins ever need related to their injury, though they seem to have recovered.

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If you are among the one million Americans who still take the brand name drug Avandia, you may want to join many others who have stopped taking it. That’s because yet another study of rosiglitazone, the drug used in Avandia, again has been shown to increase death rates in patients, particularly elderly patients with diabetes.

A new study by Harvard Medical School researchers, as reported this week in The New York Times, found that patients who took rosiglitazone had 15 per cent higher death rates than those who took pioglitazone, a comparable drug. The study also found a 13 per cent higher incidence of congestive heart failure in those taking rosiglitazone.

Both drugs are taken by persons with diabetes to help control their body sugar by enhancing their sensitivity to insulin, and the drugs often are taken along with other diabetes medicine. One goal is to enable patients to fend off taking insulin.

The trade-off is that both rosiglitazone and pioglitazone have been found to be dangerous by some researchers, including those who conducted a major study for the New England Journal of Medicine released last year.

The European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association both have eliminated rosiglitazone from their recommended treatments for type 2 diabetes. Also, consumer watchdog organization Public Citizen has urged the Food and Drug Administration to band rosiglitazone, not only for the heart problems it causes, but also because it may produce vision impairment, liver failure and other maladies.

Meanwhile, an estimated one million Americans continue to take rosiglitazone, often in the form of the brand name drug Avandia. If you are one of them, and if you have suffered any harmful effects as a result, contact a physician immediately. Then notify an Avandia lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates.

An experienced pharmaceutical lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates also offers a free case review.

Call an Avandia attorney with Jim S. Adler & Associates today at 1-800-505-1414 or fill out the firm’s online form for a free case review. Then launch the process of gaining your full and just financial recovery for your medical bills, your lost wages and your pain and suffering due to negative side effects of Avandia.

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