Quoted from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-04/pfizer-s-wyeth-unit-hid-prempro-s-breast-cancer-risks-lawyer-tells-jurors.html
Pfizer Unit Hid Prempro’s Health Risks, Lawyer Says
By David Voreacos and Sonny Rhodes - Oct 4, 2010 8:36 PM ET
A Pfizer Inc. unit failed to properly warn doctors and consumers that its Prempro menopause drug could cause breast cancer, a lawyer for an Arkansas woman who developed the disease told jurors.
Officials of Pfizer’s Wyeth subsidiary knew women like Margaret Wilson were at risk for the disease by taking the hormone-replacement drug and kept quiet to pump up sales, Chris Kirchmer, a lawyer for Wilson, told a federal court jury in Little Rock, Arkansas.
After studies showed the risks of Prempro, “they never once changed their warnings,” Kirchmer said today in opening statements in the trial of Wilson’s lawsuit over the drug. “The evidence will show you that they did not act responsibly.”
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 risk of cancer.
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.