Is Children's Advil responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths?

Following up yesterday’s story on the lawsuit against Children’s Advil, the attorney for the plaintiff states:

This is the equivalent of a medical tsunami — there was no warning put out whatsoever on this apparently benign, over-the-counter medicine.

Just a bit over-the-top, don’t you think? Clearly a statement from someone who is blinded by the dollar signs of lawsuits.

Medpundit puts him in his place:

I’m not sure how an illness that strikes 2 to 3 people per million world wide over the course of a year qualifies as a natural disaster on the scale of tsunami that kills over 100,000 people within the blink of an eye, except that they’re both due to uncontrollable forces of nature.

A really poor choice of analogy on the lawyer’s part.

Comments

Anonymous
When you step back and look at this attorney’s analysis more carefully perhaps you will realize that he was referring to the 98,000 medical errors and deaths that occur each year. The physicians were aware of the inadequacies for years but chose to be silent. The general public was not. It was an insensitive time to make the analysis but was accurate. Although, these errors are dispersed and do not generally present simultaneously as the tsunami, or for that fact 9/11, they are still deaths that could have been prevented if someone took the effort to act instead of complain or be silent.
It is every nations obligation to protect and serve their citizens, be it by providing national defense, natural defense or human defense. I found it quite interesting that there were no animal carcasses found in the tsunami. It seems the animals acted on their instincts, made a decision to leave the area and protected their young.
Wouldn’t it be nice in this New Year if the physicians, attorneys and the governing agencies worked together (acted upon their moral instincts) and removed this disaster from the spectrum instead of fighting each other thus halting improvements? We are all creatures (patients) trying to protect our young…aren’t we? Or are the animals smarter than we are?
Saint Nate
Apparently that previous poster missed a few points. Here are a few things to note:
1. The bombastic lawyer was not talking about all medical errors. He specifically said , “There was no warning put out whatsoever on this apparently benign, over-the-counter medicine.” Note the determiner “this.” I read his case; he’s not going into any analysis at all and he’s not taking on the whole system. If he were, the FDA would be a co-defendent instead of the grocery store where his client bought the Children’s Motrin.
2. Animal carcasses were found in the tsunami. Read about it here and here. No matter how great an animal’s instincts are, there simply isn’t a lot of high ground found on islands and coastal plains.
3. I could go on about how contested that 98,000 dead from medical errors number is, but instead I’ll focus on the spirit of your argument. Medicine is practiced by human beings who can make mistakes with drugs that have known risks. They are not gods dispensing panacaeas. It’s not a prefect science, but there are countless successes for every one horror story.
Anonymous
Nate,
I have a few questions for you. What would you do if one of these “rare medical mistakes” caused the death of your wife or child? Would you seek accountability? Would you seek representation (from your perceived enemies) when your colleagues were instructed not to talk? Would you say “medicine isn’t a perfect science” and these things happen? I believe that your instincts would kick in and you would act like a husband/father instead of a physician who is generally perfect. Wouldn’t you expect better for your family?
—A colleague—-
Saint Nate
I really don’t think we’re colleagues. I’m not a doctor. And I don’t perceive lawyers as enemies. While I side with physicians in the malpractice liability debate, I acknowledge lawyers have some valid points worthy of consideration. I feel the system is in desperate need of reform and I argue with those who say it’s not.
So what would I do in the situations you specify? Having never been in anything similar, I really can’t say what I’d do, and it’s too complex an issue to give a stock answer to. The fact is, I believe most (by that, I mean more than 99 percent) doctors are acting in their patients’ best interests and doing all they can for them with the training and science at their disposal. Suing them for factors beyond their control is a pointless endeavor at best.
If you want an answer, take this one: I probably not consider a malpractice suit without solid evidence of wrongdoing or negligence on the part of the physician or the pharmaceutical company.
So to stick to this one specific case: if I were in the parent’s position, I probably would consider a lawsuit, but I doubt I’d move forward with it. I’d look the past medical evidence establishing a link first. I’m skeptical about their data, especially since all the existing literature implicates the link between SJS and ibuprofen is tenuous at best. We’re taking about two suspected cases of a very rare condition out of millions of adminstered Children’s Motrin tablets. If there is proof of data and suppressed evidence as they say in their case, that could change my mind, but I’d have to see it first.
If i decided to press legal action, I’d seek a far less bombastic lawyer. This attorney’s sweeping, overblown, exaggerated statements are harming his credibility. And I’d certainly limit my case to the pharmaceutical company – they’re suing the distributors and the store where the pills were purchased too. In my opinion, that’s going too far. The legal maneuvering is my main complaint about this whole story.

Is Children’s Advil responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths?

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