The major defense contractor KBR Inc is being sued by 16 Indiana National Guard soldiers. The suit claims its employees knowingly allowed the soldiers to be exposed to a toxic chemical in Iraq five years ago.

The suit alleges the soldiers from a Tell City-based unit were exposed to a sodium dichromate, a known carcinogen, while protecting an Iraqi water pumping plant shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2003. The suit also claims that the Houston-based KBR knew at least as early as May 2003 that the plant was contaminated, but concealed the danger from civilian workers and 139 soldiers.

The chemical, used to remove pipe corrosion, is especially dangerous because it contains hexavalent chromium, which is known to cause birth defects and cancer, particularly lung cancer, the lawsuit said. The cancer can take years to develops. Some of the soldiers who served at the site now have respiratory system tumors associated with hexavalent chromium exposure.

When Guard members and American civilians working at the plant began to have nosebleeds, KBR managers told them they were simply caused by the dry desert air, the lawsuit says.

The work was not shut down until September 2003 after KBR managers in full environmental protective gear inspected the plant while workers and Guard members remained unprotected.

One of the most important jobs of the FDA is to provide the public with clear information about drug safety. Another mission is to reveal what it knows about potentially defective drugs.

How well the FDA is doing with its primary mission is being questioned by Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) who wrote a letter to the US Government Accountability Office: asking is the FDA telling us everything it knows?

The GAO is being asked to review the FDA’s handling of the contaminated heparin problems of 2007 and 2008. In his letter, Barton notes that the FDA’s statements to the media in July 2008 indicate that the agency had “conclusively linked” deaths of three patients to oversulfated chondroitin sulfate found in specific lots of the drug, which is manufactured by Baxter Healthcare.

Yet when Barton requested information, the agency told him in October 2008 that it was merely “possible” that heparin caused two of the deaths and that it could not assess whether heparin caused the third death, while Baxter’s investigation of the situation concluded that it was unlikely that heparin had caused any of the three deaths.

The FDA did not interview Baxter to get more information about the deaths and that inconsistency troubles Barton.

Could drug companies be cooking the books where it comes to getting FDA approval for new drugs?

Recent research published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine shows that many drug studies submitted to and read by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration go unpublished.

In addition to that, some that are published sport inconsistencies between the study that was submitted and the study that was subsequently released. Changes included additions and/or deletions, statistical alterations of outcomes and changes in trial conclusions.

In general, reports that show the studied drug in a favorable light are much more likely to be published. Of forty-three trials that showed no benefit to the test drug, only half were published.

This kind of dishonesty in the medical field can be very dangerous, possibly misleading doctors and patients alike while they make important decisions about the patient’s health. Unfortunately, discrepancies such as these can be very hard to detect or prosecute.

The Texas defective drug attorneys at Cappolino, Dodd & Krebs are concerned about your health. Have you been injured by a defective drug? Contact us today.