Trasylol – The Worldwide Cover Up that Killed Thousands
The company that was responsible for a dangerous drug given to tens of thousands of Australians without their knowledge knew of its potentially lethal side effects and ignored them..
..In amongst the pages one word caught his eye.
Jenny's dad had been given Trasylol.
What she uncovered next was a cover-up that lastest decades about the dangers of Trayslol.
But most doctors and all patients were in the dark for the whole time Bayer sold this drug.
Yet, as far back as the early 1980s, in their own hometown Bayer was being warned by researchers at the University of Cologne of severe kidney damage in animals that had been given Trasylol.
Bayer ignored the warning.
In 1992, a study in humans showed the same side-effects. Bayer showed the same lack of interest.
Meanwhile, in 1991, Australia's TGA had finally approved Trasylol's use.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians were put in danger after being given Trasylol.
How many died in total is unknown, but one study puts the death rate at one thousand people per month in America.
Erik Clarke and his wife Marcelle are English journalists who began investigating the victims of Trasylol after Erik became one of them.
In October 2004 he had heart by-pass surgery and in March 2005 he suffered a stroke.
"My GP was stunned, my cardiologist was stunned, the cardiac surgeon was stunned, partly or very largely because only a few months before I’d had virtually every test known to mankind to see what kind of state I was in," Erik said.
Erik requested a copy of his hospital treatment notes
"I went through them carefully, I had to go through them with a pencil going down through every line, and finally I found the only two references to Trasylol in the whole document," he said.
"I was told that, in fact, after the stroke and when all my medical records were examined I was told that [the risk of stroke] was less than one per cent."
The risk was 181 per cent after he had Trasylol.
Like every Australian patient given Trasylol, Erik was never told of those potentially lethal side-effects.
In the same year Erik suffered his stroke, Bayer was rolling in money.
In 2005, the company forecast future Trasylol sales of $600 million per year.
For that kind of money there is a big incentive to ignore warnings and to keep secret the trouble with Trasylol.
Eight years ago, Bayer testified to the USA Food and Drug Administration. An independent study had been published suggesting that Trasylol was deadly.
Bayer persuaded the FDA to keep the drug on the market.
Then it was revealed that Bayer had not told the full truth about what the company really knew.
Jim Ronca is an American trial lawyer who sued Bayer on behalf of 50 families.
"We have had some clients for whom the kidney failure was so bad that their kidneys failed completely and they had to go on dialysis," Jim said.
It was in January 2006 that it all began to unravel for Bayer.
The New England Journal of Medicine published the largest study on Trasylol, over 5000 patients.
It found that they were twice as likely to experience kidney failure; had a 55 per cent increase of heart failure and 181 per cent increased risk of stroke than patients using cheaper alternative drugs.
But BAYER disputed the study and commissioned for their own but when it too found problems, they suppressed the evidence and failed to tell the authorities.
Bayer did not expect the author of the study turning into a whistle blower and telling the FDA all he knew.
In 2006, Trasylol sales were predicted to top three quarters of a billion dollars.
However, the USA Food and Drug Administration discovered Bayer had failed to disclose its own study suggesting Trasylol was killing patients.
At the end of 2007, Trasylol was finally pulled off the market.
But not before terrible harm was done to countless families all over the world..
