Quoted from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-17/pfizer-seeking-to-duck-prempro-cancer-liability-lawyer-argues-at-trial.html
Pfizer Seeking to Duck Prempro Cancer Liability, Lawyer Argues at Trial
By Jef Feeley - Aug 17, 2010A Pfizer Inc. unit is seeking to duck responsibility for two women’s breast cancers linked to its Prempro menopause drug, a lawyer argued at the end of a trial.
Pfizer’s Wyeth subsidiary rejected Sharon Buxton’s and Joy Henry’s claims that its hormone-replacement medicine helped cause their cancers in the face of a wealth of evidence to the contrary, Zoe Littlepage, a lawyer for the women, told a state court jury today in Philadelphia.
“Wyeth accepts responsibility for not a single breast cancer,” Littlepage said in closing arguments in the trial of the two women’s lawsuit against the drugmaker. The pair seek at least $100,000 total in damages in the first phase of the case.
More than 6 million women took the menopause drugs to treat symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study highlighted their links to cancer. Wyeth’s sales of the medicines, which are still on the market, topped $2 billion before the Women’s Health Initiative, a National Institutes of Health-sponsored study, concluded they posed an increased cancer risk.
Until 1995, many menopausal women combined Premarin, Wyeth’s estrogen-based drug, with Upjohn’s progestin-laden Provera, to relieve their symptoms. Wyeth later combined the two hormones in its Prempro pill.
Wyeth’s witnesses testified during the five-week trial that researchers haven’t conclusively found Prempro causes breast cancer, and Buxton’s and Henry’s lawyers didn’t produce enough evidence linking their cancers to the drug to win, Beth Wilkinson, one of the company’s attorneys, told jurors.