Legal systems are not all about the top court. That state legislators should be allowed to shield the pharmaceutical manufacturers from liability even though their medications or medical devices may have injured people. The justification is that the Federal Government has delegated the task of regulating the safety of medications and medical devices to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
So, here we comes McNellis v. Pfizer Inc. which was decided by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in tandem with Colacicco v. Apotex Inc.Both are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) used to treat depression. Patients taking either zoloft or paxil committed suicide. Although there is a black box notice that warns of the risk to some extent, the FDA refused wording in a stronger and more explicit form. The cases brought before the state courts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey reached opposite conclusions. On appeal, it was decided that state laws do pre-empt the right to claim that there was no adequate warning of the risk of suicide.
Whether the FDA should or should not enforce a more strict labelling system has been the subject of debate for some years. The SSRIs including zoloft are associated with changes in mood, particularly among the young. Now, in one sense, that is exactly what a pharmaceutical company making an antidepressant would want to hear.
When potentially suicidal people go untreated, some will commit suicide. Let us put the SSRIs including zoloft to one side. Therapy and counselling might have saved more lives. But the warning put out by Health Canada was vague. It did not instruct doctors or their patients how to react. Were they to stop prescribing or taking zoloft? Were they to change the dosage of zoloft? What change in the symptoms after taking zoloft might indicate danger? When some parents are ashamed of their children’s illness, it can be difficult to get them to bring their children for treatment. Put out a vague warning with no specific recommendation on how to react, and prejudices are confirmed and the children are left untreated.
Warning notices are, however, equally two-edged. Also published this month in the Canadian Medical Association Journal is research into the consequences of the warning published by Health Canada that there was an increased risk among younger patients taking SSRIs including zoloft. In the two years after the warning, there was a 25% increase in the number of suicides in Manitoba. Two further facts may be stated: there was a significant reduction in the number of younger patients brought forward for treatment, and a 14% drop in the number of prescriptions written for patients under the age of eighteen years.