OAN’s James Meyers
1:32 PM – Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Pfizer has agreed to financially settle 10,000 lawsuits which allege that the pharmaceutical company did not disclose to patients that possible cancer risks were associated with its anti-heartburn medication Zantac.
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This also comes after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Pfizer “for unlawfully misrepresenting the effectiveness of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine and attempting to censor public discussion of the product” in 2023.
The Zantac lawsuits were filed in state courts across the U.S., but the agreements do not completely resolve Pfizer’s exposure to the claims linking Zantac to cancer, according to Bloomberg News.
Terms of the settlements were not disclosed.
Zantac was introduced into the market in 1983 by Glaxo Holdings, a company that is now part of the GlaxoSmithKline company. In 1988, it was the world’s best selling drug of its kind as patients reported benefits for conditions such as acid reflux, heartburn, and ulcers.
By 1997, Glaxo’s patent for Zantac’s active ingredient, ranitidine, expired.
In the same year, pharmaceutical companies also started working on generic versions of the drug.
However, in 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked drugmakers to pull Zantac and its generic versions of the drug after a cancer-causing compound called NDMA was found in samples.
As a result, thousands of lawsuits began coming in federal and state courts against GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Boehringer Ingelheim.
In April, Sanofi reached an agreement in principle to settle 4,000 lawsuits linking Zantac to cancer.
Although Sanofi did not disclose the official financial terms of the deal, Bloomberg News reported that the company will pay around $100 million, or $25,000 to each plaintiff.
Meanwhile, a Chicago woman who claimed to have contracted colon cancer after taking Zantac for over 20 years filed a lawsuit, which went to trial last week. Angela Valadez, 89, filed the suit against GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim.
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