Quoted from http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-09-03/takeda-put-actos-sales-ahead-of-consumer-safety-lawyer-says-1
Takeda Put Actos Sales Ahead of Consumer Safety, Lawyer Says
By Peter Geier and Jef Feeley September 03, 2013
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. (4502), Asia’s biggest drugmaker, put sales ahead of safety by failing to warn consumers about its Actos diabetes medicine’s cancer risks, a lawyer argued in the second case over the drug to go to trial.
Officials of Osaka, Japan-based Takeda knew by 2005 at the latest that studies had shown links between Actos and cancer, and didn’t issue a warning until six years later, Stuart Simms, a lawyer for the family of Diep An, told a jury today in state court in Baltimore. An’s family blames Actos for the Vietnamese immigrant’s bladder-cancer death last year.
Takeda executives “knew the value of the drug and they knew the risks” Actos posed and they opted not to adequately warn An or his doctors, Simms told jurors in opening arguments of the trial of the family’s suit against Takeda. The delay in issuing the warning allowed the company to push ahead with efforts to “sell, sell, sell” Actos, he said.
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