Apparently it’s impossible to sue Merck as no lawyer wants to take on the case an absolute disgrace that we have been left disabled and can’t do anything about it. This is a short reply that I got from a well established product liability lawyer in New York.
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When Melcangi or Baylor prove that this drug is the problem they will call you back so fast.
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I don’t know about that it’s very hard to really show the extent of the damage especially in the brain as there is no diagnostic tools except checking for altered neurosteroids. They should be paying this foundation millions to help pay for the mess they made, its obscene we are having to fund this ourselves. It’s so hard to make sense of this situation, in hindsight I had an injury years back and it was super easy to file a claim only my injury this time is a thousand times worse.
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His name is sim young and he is the character of a drama and he is famous internet meme in Korea. He was shot in the lower half of the body and became an eunuch. The profile picture is a scene where Sim young hears about it from the doctor and cries out.
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Oh… Thank you for your good points. I will make a new composite picture soon.
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This is another reason why the drive for further scientific study is so important: the causative link. It is a crucial prerequisite for successful court action. By the by, it occurred to me the other day that, for all the talk of big pharma and “profit over people”, I only spent £50 total for my one packet of Propecia, from which I used a total of one tablet. So, for the monumental personal injury to me and my life, Merck made less than £50. They might be able to pick up an Xbox controller in the black Friday sale with the profits.
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I don’t know how the legal system works in the UK, but there isn’t much hope for this to be revived in the US unfortunately.
For whatever its worth, Merck didn’t hide these side effects from the public for just your profit. Had they properly disclosed the risks they knew about, sales across the board would have been hit very hard, maybe even demolished. They chose to save the drug at the cost of creating a population of PFS patients. It’s a problem with the perverse incentives of the pharmaceutical industry and regulatory system that things like this happen.
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What precludes this from being brought to court in the US if a causative link is established? Is there some precedent that points to this?
Obviously not lol. I was just reflecting how in my own case, the cost has been so gigantic to myself and the manufacturer didn’t even gain anything from me for it. No monetary value can actually compensate what this has cost me.
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Madness and they got £17 from me I went the cheaper route not that it made a difference. Imagine that’s all it takes to ruin a life these days.
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I was looking to find a human rights lawyer in the U.K. that would take this fight against the regulatory agency so if I can’t get at Merck I’m going after the government. Under the human rights act: “Public authorities should also consider your right to life when making decisions that might put you in danger or that affect your life expectancy.” On that grounds alone we have a basis to take them up.
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There might be a statute of limitations problem in the US, although that varies state by state. The other issue is that they’ve already settled 600 cases for very little, so I don’t think other lawyers will be interested in pursuing this. Not saying this was the fair outcome but it seems like the likely one.
You’re right there’s a statutory of limitations act that means you have a certain time limit before you can file a lawsuit from time of injury in the U.K it’s 3 years.
It has nothing to do with justice though. If its impossible to prove a causal link between finasteride and PFS, its obvious that lawyers wont take our case. Why should they? It would be a waste of time and counterproductive. Do you again want to settle with them for almost nothing?
Its a failure of the medical field that did not properly assess the risks associated with finasteride and still doesnt understand how PFS is caused. I am not even convinced Merck knew or should have known of the extensive damage finasteride could cause. The only reason we know is because we are affected, but we are unable to explain why and how it happened. So how is someone who is not affected supposed to know?
To a certain extend they were right: For the vast majority of people finasteride does not cause major problems. Its only a tiny minority that got fucked, so to me its not obvious that everyone knew or should have known beforehand that this could happen to a tiny minority.
Look at the survey, only 160 people have filled it out. How many people worldwide have and/or are taking 5-AR inhibitors? To be honest I dont see how it could convince sceptics.
I think the biggest failure was the FDA, that approved a drug that significantly altered the hormonal makeup of a man for something as insignificant as hairloss! Any regulator should have only allowed it for treatment of more serious medical conditions, even if the studies were promising.
Merck definitely knew about PFS during the clinical trials. They may have disingenuously tried to argue that it wasn’t real but they found evidence of patients who developed problems and then lied about it in the warning label. This was all exposed in the Reuters reports and related court documents.
To that end, we did get some justice and over time more people will realize what Merck did. It will take time. It would have been nice to be financially compensated for our time and suffering and for Merck to be found guilty in a court of law but those wouldn’t have done much to help us.
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I cant imagine the information available to Merck at the time that was leaked to Reuters being as conclusive as you claim. If that was the case they wouldnt have had to settle for a pathetically low amount.
It’s got everything to do with justice, well for me it does anyway. It’s not impossible to prove, there has already been proof looking at patients showing altered neurosteroids against control subjects surely that’s a sign something has went drastically wrong secondly if and when the Baylor study arrives then we could run methylation diagnostics on our own genomes and compare it with the study more proof and another step on the ladder to getting justice.
Once the statue of limitations act is up then you will settle for nothing because by that stage it’s too late.
Trust me, they knew about the side effects, how could you ever side with such a scummy company when they have destroyed your life man. I’ll say this I guarantee you that there is thousands in similar positions, it took me several months before I knew for sure it was the pill that did it- there is many men who have never even heard of this website or PFS. It took Ryan Clark years to figure out his side effects were due to finasteride while he kept using.
If you read the article, you’ll see that it was. I think we’ve discussed this before before there were a lot of other factors at play and there is more to proving deceit.
All of that information was available almost twenty years ago, in 2002.
Well currently it is. Maybe in the future it wont be and then a court case makes sense.
I am not siding with Merck. I just dont buy into the “Merck had conclusive information on the fact that finasteride caused PFS” and that “a big percentage of people is affected” narrative. To me it seems to go counter to available facts and anecdotal evidence.
I know there is an emotional need for some to say that the entire company from top to bottom is corrupt, a high percentage of people is affected and lawyers should jump to take on our case but are too lazy/corrupt to do so. To me that seems like a very emptional and infantile way to look at the situation.
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Currently the number of registered members/survey participants clearly shows that a small number of people are severely affected. Maybe there is a larger number of people who are very mildly affected so that its hard to make a connection. But the claim that a high percentage of finasteride takers are severely affected is nonsense.
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Merck, at least in the courts and lawyers opinion, could not have had conclusive information on PFS being caused by finasteride, otherwise they wouldnt have been able to settle for what amounts to basically nothing. At least that seems obvious to me. Maybe someone familiar with American law can explain to me, how a prove of Merck having conclusive information on PFS would not be enough to get a nice compensation.
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Lawyers therefore are now making a rational decision, unless there were studies not properly looked at in the last court decision.
You’ve clearly not read the materials so it is a bit disturbing you are jumping to defend Merck. Not everybody at the organization is crooked, but the culture there is toxic and has incentivized or pushed people to make bad decisions. The exec in charge of the warning label admitted it was inaccurate in deposition. I don’t know if this makes you feel better or worse, but it is just the reality of how it went down, and now there is conclusive proof.
The original post did an OK job of explaining how the case stumbled. They neglected the scientific case which was always going to be difficult. But they knew for decades about this. They would just argue that the information they hid was scientifically irrelevant, but that is clearly untrue because if that were the case they would have obviously disclosed it. Life isn’t fair.