(NaturalNews) In arguments and discussion for
Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent heard today, Justices are proposing that consumers should not be able to sue pharmaceutical companies for damages from side effects
because some people might be helped by those same drugs. Forget all the technical legalities -- this argument is absurd from the outset. Here's why:
If Ford makes a defective car with a poorly-designed gasoline tank that explodes and kills someone, that person's family has a right to sue
Ford, correct? But the U.S.
Supreme Court is now effectively arguing that
Ford should be granted immunity to all lawsuits because its cars provide benefits to other drivers.
In other words, the fact that Ford cars don't kill some
consumers somehow makes up for the ones killed by those defective
cars. (In this case, Ford is just an example. There is no pending legislation against Ford that involves the U.S. Supreme Court.)
That argument is absurd. If put in place, it would mean that
individuals no longer have the right to sue companies for defective products, and the very definition of "harm" is no longer measured on an individual basis but rather by some sort of yet-unstated collective scorekeeping that says no company can be sued if its
products provide benefits to somebody.
Of course, this is all being selectively applied only to the pharmaceutical
industry at the moment, but if this line of
thinking is allowed to continue, it could very quickly lead to blanket immunity for virtually all
corporations against any consumer
lawsuits. After all, the argument being made to protect
Big Pharma is that even though
drugs kill lots of people, the fact that they help some people who aren't killed outweighs the liability from the dead people. Should this also apply to automobiles? Fireworks? Roller coasters? At what point does the U.S. Supreme Court think corporations should actually be held liable for the harm caused by their products?
The abandonment of corporate responsibility and the surrender of consumer rights
Apparently, some Justices believe corporations should
never be held liable for harmful products, even if they committed fraud in getting their products approved by regulatory agencies such as
the FDA. It's true: At least one Supreme Court Justice is now arguing that even in cases of
drug companies defrauding the
FDA and lying about the
safety of their drugs, the public should still have no right whatsoever to sue over the damage (or death) caused by those drugs.
And how about collapsing bridges and buildings? According to the U.S. Supreme Court's current thinking, people who are killed in a collapse of a defective bridge or building should have absolutely no legal recourse. Why? Because that same bridge or building provided benefits to other people who were not killed!
Thus, the Supreme Court is actually following a line of flawed reasoning that would deny consumers the right to sue corporations for practically anything! This is why I have come to the commonsense conclusion that the U.S. Supreme Court has surrendered the rights of the
American people to greedy corporations that will soon, it seems, have no incentive at all to make safe products.
By the way, notice too that Big Tobacco was ultimately granted blanket product immunity under a complex settlement that essentially involved paying off U.S. States with a portion of the revenues generated by
tobacco products that openly kill people. Thus, Big Tobacco was allowed to stay in business, producing products that directly kill millions of people each year around the world. This bring up an important law of every capitalist society:
No sufficiently profitable industry will ever be brought to justice, even if its products destroy the health and lives of consumers. There's simply too much profit at stake, and money has an insidious way of influencing regulatory and judicial decisions while negating whatever imaginary rights the citizens once believed they were entitled to.
Why consumer lives are worth nothing to corporations
Under the protection of blanket immunity, corporations consider
the lives of consumers to be worth exactly zero dollars, and thus the normal equations of safety
costs vs. liability risk are thrown out the window, replaced with a new equation of maximizing
profits by minimizing expensive safety precautions. The only reason corporations currently place any value at all on the lives of consumers is because there are financial costs associated with harming or killing people (thanks to product liability lawsuits). Take away those financial costs, and the corporations will then consider consumer lives to be worthless in any way other than the fact that consumers might be worth something if they live long enough to keep buying more products.
What's obvious in all this is that the U.S. legal system has devolved into such a morass of fictitious legal technicalities that it no longer has any concept of commonsense reality. There should be no argument necessary at all in this case: Of course consumers have the right to sue companies over
pharmaceuticals (or cars or bridges) that directly harm them! And the fact that the FDA or some other corrupt (or incompetent) government agency slaps its approval onto a product should in no way grant the manufacturer complete immunity from the very real effects caused by its products. Pharmaceuticals kill people. It's a simple fact. And Big Pharma should be held responsible for the harm caused by its products. But the Supreme Court is now looking for ways to weave complex legal technicalities into a convenient but entirely dishonest shield that allows drug companies to literally get away with murder.
An era of unbridled madness
If you were looking for
evidence of why the United States of
America has gone mad, look no further than the regulatory and legal fabrications surrounding pharmaceuticals. Not only do we now have a system of organized medicine that operates as organized crime by protecting monopoly prices, engaging in routine scientific fraud, and drugging
children with powerful psychotropic
chemicals without even a single shred of real evidence that those children are "diseased," but now we have a legal system that seems poised to hand Big Pharma unlimited permission to manufacture and market extremely dangerous chemicals with impunity.
The consumer has now been relegated to the role of "useless eater," with zero rights and zero value. The corporations are in charge, and the corrupt judicial system is now protecting the profits of these corporations by selling out the people. A new era of corporate-sponsored chemical destruction is spreading like a dark shadow over the future of the American people, and the highest court in the land has declared its loyalty to the corporate Kings who rule over American consumers as tyrants over peasants.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also the founder of a well known HTML email software company whose 'Email Marketing Director' software currently runs the NaturalNews subscription database. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Monday, February 25, 2008
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