A Prescription Drug Lawsuit Is About Much More Than Financial Compensation For The Victims

When individuals and families discover that a medication they have taken in the past led to a serious medical condition, they wonder if they have grounds for a prescription drug lawsuit. There are those that feel pharmaceutical lawsuits don't have much merit but it's difficult for those who oppose such legal action to truly understand and thus, empathize, what these victims. We've come to trust the medications we are prescribed but situations such as the one currently surrounding the antidepressant Paxil have rightly made many begin to question that trust.

Following the release of multiple studies done on Paxil, the FDA was forced to reclassify the medication and warn about the risks it poses, in particular, to women who are pregnant. These studies indicate that when a woman takes Paxil during the first trimester of a pregnancy, they are greatly increasing the risk of giving birth to a heart defect baby or a child suffering from other birth defects. Unfortunately, these studies came out over a decade after Paxil was placed on the market. As a result, there's a large number of women who took the medication while pregnant and unknowingly put their unborn child at risk for these health problems.

These women would have chosen another medication to treat their depression had they been made aware of these risks but they were not given that choice due to what many see as negligence on the part of GlaxoSmithKline, the makers of Paxil. It's for this reason that many feel filing a prescription drug lawsuit against the company is not just a choice that they have available to them but one they should seriously consider. Contrary to common perception, a prescription drug lawsuit isn't about just securing financial compensation for the pain and suffering of the victims.

Raising awareness of the issue and putting pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to be more diligent in the research they do on their products before making them available to the public are other consequences that come from a prescription drug lawsuit. Certainly relief from the financial burden caused by the medical care needed to treat a baby with Paxil birth defects is a motivating factor for these families and rightfully so, but they also want to help others avoid the same devastating fate. Hiring a Paxil attorney that knows how these cases work and what is needed to win such a case is the only way to ensure that your prescription drug lawsuit is successful.