move on, page-2

Want another, Remember GSK has not been shut down or refused license to sell their products.

On behalf of Baggett, McCall, Burgess, Watson & Gaugham, LLC posted in Dangerous and Defective Drugs on Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Every day, millions of people take prescription drugs manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. The drug maker produces everything from antidepressants to skin ointments. And the patients who take those prescription drugs expect their pill bottles to contain the appropriate medication.

The Justice Department discovered that a manufacturing plant owned by GSK was making serious mistakes. Although the company sold the plant in 2009, the lawsuit regarding the prescription defects was only recently resolved.

GSK owned and operated a manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico. The plant was responsible for producing many GSK drugs, including Paxil (an antidepressant) and Bactroban (a skin ointment). The Justice Department discovered that the plant was responsible for serious defects with these widely-used drugs.

Perhaps the most egregious errors involved the ointments and anti-nausea medications. Inspectors discovered that some of these medications were contaminated by microorganisms that could harm patients using them.

Further, certain medications were not sorted by strength. So a bottle of a certain medication may contain 10 mg pills as well as 30 mg pills. This kind of error can have serious consequences to patients' health.

The third serious drug defect involved Paxil specifically. The drug is designed to be taken as a two-layer pill. Both layers are critical to its effectiveness. The manner in which the Puerto Rico plant produced Paxil caused the two layers to split.

Late last month, GSK reached a multi-million dollar settlement with the Justice Department over these allegations. The company's senior vice president acknowledged the errors, saying, "We regret that we operated the ... facility in a manner that was inconsistent with good manufacturing practice requirements."