If an unsafe drug lawsuit is taken out in a country you don’t live in, does it affect you? Yes, if the drug in question is also prescribed or available in your country. Such a lawsuit can also have a knock on effect where it raises the issue of a certain drug or type of drug: so ultimately it depends on the precise kind of lawsuit that is being brought.
If a person successfully sues a company as a result of taking one of its prescription drugs or over the counter drugs, and either that drug or that type of drug is pending for approval in your country of residence – then you probably aren’t going to see it in a hurry. So if you were waiting for it to be approved so you could start taking it, the unsafe drugs lawsuit we give example of here is clearly going to affect you.
If the drug is causing secondary side effects – i.e. side effects that occur as a result of the effect of the drug, rather than a result of the actual physical components of the drug – then a foreign lawsuit may also affect you, because it will raise awareness of a type of drug as being more dangerous than was previously supposed. You also find drugs with unknown long term side effects come into this area – Thalidomide being a major example. Without the unsafe drug lawsuit brought by thousands of Britons against the manufacturers of Thalidomide, the extraordinarily dangerous long term effects of its use would still be un-ratified.
That’s an important point, actually. Ratification is a big part of the efficacy of unsafe drug claims: once one is successful, the public suspicion of that drug or kind of drug is confirmed. Ultimately the unsafe drug trial, from this point of view, becomes a way for the public to protect itself against less scrupulous drug manufacturers as well as against the unlooked for side effects of particular drugs.
In other words: all dangerous drug claims, made anywhere in the world, have a bearing on your life. From this wider viewpoint, we all need unsafe drug lawsuits simply so that we can maintain a world in which it is possible to bring an unsafe drug lawsuit into being. Because without them we would have no sure fire way of taking the drug companies to account when something goes wrong, or is suspected of going wrong.
Drug companies are often driven by profit – we all know that. And in a world where the companies that make the pills and potions we rely on to stay healthy (and in some cases even to save our lives when things go wrong) are as motivated by money as they are by the urge to cure and palliate, then it’s up to us to fight for our rights as consumers. The best way to do that? By keeping the drug manufacturers afraid of losing big money if an unsafe drugs lawsuit is brought against them.
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