On June 4, 2008, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that Merck is not responsible for monitoring the health of Vioxx users who have not shown any sign of injury. The court voted 5-1, dismissing a class action lawsuit filed by users of Vioxx who were seeking to have Merck pay for continuous medical monitoring to discover Vioxx related injuries.

In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Vioxx to be removed from the market due to a link between Vioxx and heart attacks and other cardiac related fatalities. During the time period of the drugs inception in 1999 to 2003, Vioxx is responsible for more than 27,000 heart related incidents.

In this recent decision, the judges ruled that since the Vioxx users involved in the lawsuit did not have established injuries, they could not establish that the drug caused them harm.

There are defective drug attorneys working to help those who have suffered serious injuries as a result of defective prescription medication.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stated that at the end of the year albuterol inhalers, which are commonly used to treat asthma, will no longer be available for use.

Albuterol inhalers typically use a chemical called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. This chemical is used to propel the drug into the patient’s lungs, but has been found to be damaging to Earth’s ozone layer.

The Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer have settled on a treaty in which the United States has agreed to stop producing and importing substances harmful to the ozone, including CFCs. Therefore, as of December 31st, inhalers containing these chemicals can no longer be made or sold in the U.S.

The alternative will be inhalers using hydrofluoroalkanes, or HFAs. The FDA has already approved ProAir HFA Inhalation Aerosol, Proventil HFA Inhalation Aerosol, and Ventolin HFA Inhalation Aerosol, as well as Xopenex HFA Inhalation Aerosol which contains levalbuterol.

The FDA has confirmed that these alternatives are safe and effective for those switching from CFC inhalers, although they will taste and feel different. Each has different priming, cleaning, and drying instructions to prevent the medicine from building up in the inhaler.

The FDA states that there is an adequate supply of the HFA inhalers as increased production has already started, but urges those with asthma to start talking to their doctors now.

Defective drug attorneys are working on cases in which prescription drugs have caused harmful and serious side effects.

Actor Dennis Quaid has joined the Democratic effort to protect the rights of victims to get compensation from pharmaceutical companies. Quaid went before congress to relate his own family’s misfortune from last November. In 2007, Quaid’s twin babies were given one thousand times the normal dose of the blood thinner heparin, and nearly died. The Quaids are suing Baxter Healthcare Corp. in an Illinois state court, claiming that Baxter was negligent when they did not recall different doses of heparin that were in similar vials with similar labels, making it difficult for doctors and nurses to tell the difference. Baxter claims they did nothing wrong, and is hiding behind a couple of recent court rulings that safeguarded makers of some medical devices and prescription drugs from lawsuits.