Funny how this isn't on the news everywhere. Seems like something worthy of some coverage.

http://www.dailypaul.com/291869/supreme-court-rules-drug-companies-exempt-from-lawsuits

Not that it's not newsworthy, but sites like the one you linked are exactly why libertarians have a hard time gaining ground in mainstream American political discourse.

i would be more likely to believe something from a ron paul website before a obama or us government website. thats sad.

It is newsworthy no doubt, but the state run media will not do their jobs and actually report anything worthy or true in most cases. they dont say anything about monsanto and government being in bed together either. What do you expect?

Pretty much.  It's a pretty funny case since it was a 5-4 vote where the conservatives won out, despite it being  a federalist vs states rights case.  The Conservatives were the federalists in this case, and the librerals the states right advocates.

Essentially the whole thing boils down to one simple thing.

State law requires that drug manufacturers post updated information about new sideffects in a timely matter and aren't unduly dangerous

Federal law requires that generic drug manufacturers must directly copy name brand warning labels, and their drugs must use the same kind of formula as the name brand drugs.

The company in this case could not update information on side effects in a timely matter because the federal law required them to directly copy the non-generic warning label.  Nor could they make the drug safer because they were forced to use the more unsafe namebrand version.

Due to Federal Primacy the state law is invalidated for all generic drugs.  (Aka 80%).

It's the correct ruling... and just another case of showing how the correct ruling isn't always the "best" one for the people.    People shouldn't be attacking the supreme court but instead pushing congress to ammend the federal law so that further state protections can function as intended.

Perhaps a happy middleground would of been to let generic users sue name brand companies for unsafe drug formulas if the results would of been the same on their drug.

i agree with this

My mother is actually part of a lawsuit against a drug company. They gave her an osteoperosis drug which was known to cause necrosis of the jaw. Of course, they didn't tell her.

She also was almost given Alzheimers by her statin drugs.

This is terrible news. Not only do doctors receive money from the drug companies for prescribing their drugs, but they're now immune to legal action? This is terrible. It's a fantastic example of our government obeying the lobbyists and doing the thing least in our interest.

That's what we have here. No one is allowed to sue doctors. If people suffer medical mishaps we have a compensation company that pays out based on the severity of the mishap, it's funded through general annual levvies on employers and employees, so basically a nationalised medical accident compensation insurance. If a Dr is negligent then there's the medical council disciplinary process and the criminal courts to deal with that side.

Forcing generics to use the same formulation and label warnings as the developer of the drug is mostly beneficial to patients as patients know that they are at no greater risk of either side effects or of receiving inferior products (i.e. less of the active ingredient). If a generic manufacturer wanted to develop a different formulation they'd have to go through the clinical trial and FDA approval process, whoch would make the genric more expensive, and thus defeat the purpose of being a generic. 99% of the time the same formulation/same warnings rule protects patients, but there's always going to be unfortunate cases where the opposite occurs. 

The one area where the law should be amended is in the warning  content of labels, generics should be able to add further warnings to labels, but to also have to reproduce with identical wording all warnings that appear on the developer's label.

http://www.fightdementia.org.au/alzheimers-australia-official-statement-statins-and-dementia.aspx
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/04april/Pages/papers-claim-statins-stop-alzheimers.aspx

According to these articles it seems like Statin has no significant relation to Alzheimer's at all. We don't even know what actually causes Alzheimer's yet. And even if Statin led to permanent cognitive side-effects (which according to the FDA it doesn't, as stated in above link) it still would only have increased the probabilty to suffer from Alzheimer's, not caused it. That's a major difference. If that stuff really, without fail actually caused Alzheimer's, it would be banned ASAP.

True-ish, but in medicine there is no such thing as taking something and it 100% always causing an effect. Phineas Gage comes to mind: people usually don't survive having a railroad spike blast through their cranium and take a teacup worth of gray matter with it.

That said, statins are linked to all sorts of mental illnesses. Schitzophrenia, paralysis, and general damage to the nervous system. Taking this stuff for extended periods of time is literally psychosis in a bottle, and heart attack survivors are supposed to take them indefinitely.

http://www.westonaprice.org/cardiovascular-disease/dangers-of-statin-drugs

Taking statins for one year raised the risk of nerve damage by about 15 percent--about one case for every 2,200 patients. For those who took statins for two or more years, the additional risk rose to 26 percent.

I agree with this

because I am a doctor XD.