Antidepressants

Posts Tagged ‘Antidepressants’

New Court Charges Filed Vs Pfizer Over Serious Birth Defects

1st January 2012 by Depressed No Comments

A group of parents has pursued a court case against Pfizer, Zoloft’s manufacturer, because of the birth defects it had causedon their children.

The lawsuit was filed at St. Clair County Circuit in Illinois by parents from Texas, New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, Glorida, Minnesota andIndiana. They raise their charges due to the alleged Zoloft-attributed birth defects. The antidepressant Zoloft belongs to a group of medicines called SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor).

The court charges were pursued on grounds of fraud and misrepresentation; violation of consumer protection laws; negligence; product liability; breach of express warranty; breach of implied warranties, negligent misrepresentation; misrepresentation by omission; and fraud concealment.

This untoward incident is not a first time for antidepressants to be blamed. The BCLocalNews.com previously published an article about a British Columbian couple, in which the mother, Christiane Schultz, was prescribed Effexor while pregnant and who, on February 21, 2009, she gave birth to her son, Matthew. Sadly, he died immediately two hours after he was born. The couple believed that Christiane’s Effexor’s use resulted in the untimely demise of their son.

Furthermore, a recent antidepressant-attributed death was reported by a couple from Missouri who filed a lawsuit against Pfizer after their child died allegedly from alleged Zoloft-caused birth defects. Paula Peska and Scott Day bore a child with a “Tetralogy of Fallot.” This is another antidepressant-linked child death. The lawsuit was filed on October 26, 2011 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Based on the lawsuit, “Pfizer knew of the dangerous birth defects associated with Zoloft use during pregnancy from the preclinical studies and the subsequent published studies confirming these risks. Pfizer took no action to properly study Zoloft or did not properly publish the results of the studies it did do, which would have reflected that risk.”

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “health care professionals should avoid prescribing Zoloft in women who are pregnant or are planning pregnancy, unless other treatment options are not appropriate.”

A major severe Zoloft side effect was recognized in cases in which several pregnant women were given this drug during the first trimester of pregnancy; the newborn babies ended up with congenital birth injuries and their moms had withdrawal symptoms that remained for days, weeks or even years after birth.

The following are other reported Zoloft birth defects: