Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10738
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Hill R.
Zyprexa class action may include Kiwis
The Dominion Post (New Zealand) 2007 Jun 25
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4106592a20475.html
Full text:
New Zealand patients injured by a widely prescribed anti-psychotic medication could be eligible to join a planned class action against the United States manufacturer, says an Australian lawyer.
Personal injury lawyer Simon Harrison is acting for a group of Australians who say they suffered life-threatening side-effects from taking Zyprexa, also known as olanzapine.
The drug is among four “new generation” anti-psychotic drugs prescribed in New Zealand for the treatment of mental illness, including schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, over the last decade.
Mr Harrison said the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly knew about dangerous or even deadly side-effects – including diabetes, hyperglycaemia, pancreatitis and ketoacidosis – as early as 1997 but “downplayed” them.
His client, 32-year-old Jonathon Austin, who was found to have pancreatitis after taking Zyprexa for eight years, has lodged a claim with the Supreme Court of New South Wales seeking damages of A$4 million. However, several other Australian claimants have since come forward, and Mr Harrison said his firm was exploring the possibility of “piggy-backing” on a class action in the US.
“Because of New Zealand’s no-blame system (ACC), there is no scope for personal injury claims. A class action in the US would be New Zealand claimants only chance to get compensation.”
Since April 1997, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration has had reports of 40 deaths and 1231 adverse reactions among people taking Zyprexa.
New Zealand’s Intensive Medicines Monitoring Programme has recorded five reports of diabetes mellitus, four of hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar levels), two of diabetic ketoacidosis and two of pancreatitis among Zyprexa patients.
Director, Mira Harrison-Woolrych, said the drug had generated hundreds of reports of adverse reactions, but this was not surprising because the agency had taken “a proactive approach. The fact olanzapine is still licensed in New Zealand shows clinicians believe the benefits outweigh the risks.
“The danger of publicising adverse effects without context is that you may scare people into stopping their medication out of fright.”
Geoff Bridgman, national president of Supporting Families in Mental Illness – formerly the Schizophrenia Fellowship – said New Zealand patients were less worried about side-effects from Zyprexa than by the threat of losing it.
Pharmac, the Government’s drug buying agency, recently proposed replacing Zyprexa with a generic drug on the subsidised pharmaceutical schedule.
But unlike Eli Lilly, the makers of the generic drug would make no commitment to setting up monitoring programmes, he said. “Zyprexa does have some fairly disastrous side-effects if not managed properly, but it’s a huge improvement on anything available previously.”
Medsafe spokesman Dr Stewart Jessamine said pancreatitis was a rare side-effect, occurring in less than 0.01 per cent of cases.
