Big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer would love for you to believe that they have you and your best health at heart. However, more times than not, it’s really all about money.
In fact, Pfizer just proved that by admitting to be in the process of settling in a whopping 10,000 lawsuits out of court. Why? Well, as it turns out, one of their more popular drugs, Zantac, contains a chemical now linked to cancer.
You might remember Zantac commercials being pretty much everywhere at one point. As one of the companies’ leading anti-heartburn medications, its animated fireman character became quite well known.
You might also remember that in 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that both Zantac and its generic version, known as ranitidine, contained a substance called NDMA, which has since been linked to cancer and other DNA-damaging diseases.
Now, to be clear, Zantac and its generic version were not created and sold until 1997, so it was not sold for all that long in the grand scheme of things. However, it was enough time to cause some individuals harm.
Naturally, thousands have since come after the company for damages.
And, for the most part, Pfizer is willing to settle.
“Pfizer has explored and will continue to explore opportunistic settlements of certain cases if appropriate, and has settled certain cases,” they said in a recent statement.
Other big pharma companies like GSK, Sanofi, and Boehringer Ingelheim have also entered into a grand number of settlements over the now-banned drug. Sanofi, for instance, settled about 4,000 lawsuits just last month, expected to cost the company $100 million. And in Delaware alone, there are more than 20,000 Sanofi lawsuits to go.
Combined, Sanofi and other big pharma companies make up a whopping 70,000 of the cases currently in Delaware courts.
Of course, they claim that these settlements aren’t an admission of wrongdoing or “merit.” Rather, the companies have admitted that it will just cost them less to settle in the long run instead of undergoing expensive and distracting litigation.
Just to let you know, NDMA, the dangerous chemical in their drug, is an ingredient of rocket fuel. But no wrongdoing here…
