Yahoo! News reports that a hormone replacement drug appears to increase the odds of having breast cancer. Excepts below.
Link: US jury says Wyeth drug caused woman's breast cancer - Yahoo! News.
A jury on Wednesday awarded a woman $1 million and her husband $500,000 in compensatory damages after finding that Wyeth's hormone replacement drug Prempro was a cause of her breast cancer.
The trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas now moves into a second phase to begin on October 12, in which the jury will decide whether Wyeth failed to warn of the dangers of Prempro.
In the first federal Prempro trial, a jury last month in Little Rock, Arkansas found Wyeth was not negligent and had adequately warned patients and doctors of the cancer risk associated with the drug.
Wyeth is facing some 5,000 lawsuits involving its hormone replacement drugs.
"Lawyers all around the country are watching what happens in these cases to get a sense of whether Prempro plaintiffs have a chance of winning," said Howard Erichson, professor of law at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, New Jersey.
Deutsche Bank analyst Barbara Ryan predicted that few Prempro plaintiffs will win punitive damages because Wyeth immediately changed the drug's label to reflect an increased cancer risk after a federally sponsored trial showed long-term use of the drug in combination with the female hormone replacement estrogen caused a 26 percent higher risk of breast cancer in women aged 50 to 79 who had not undergone hysterectomies.
