Texas Injury Law Blog

As a Texas product safety attorney, father of four, and grandfather of one, I have been keenly interested in following a tragic new development regarding child safety risks: Seven infant deaths linked to some very popular infant slings indicate that many of the models of slings may pose too great of a danger to infants, according to Inez Tenenbaum, Chairwoman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal government's consumer protection agency. So says EmaxHealth in a recent article on the subject. In fact, some 1,588 posts on the issue of infant sling dangers appear on the CPSC's own website as of today.

According to a Tampa Bay Online March 9th article, Chairwoman Tenenbaum said that the CPSC is on the verge of issuing a general warning to the public concerning the grave hazard.

Further tracing the history of problems with infant slings, the Tampa Bay Online article pointed out another scary fact: as far back as 2008, safety watchdog Consumers Union began warning of other infant sling hazards, in an article published in its Consumer Reports magazine. In fact, its current article on the subject elaborates on 37 other serious injuries to infants carried in those slings. Says the article, skull fractures and other broken bones, plus serious bruises, occurred most often when the infant actually fell out of the sling. Poignantly, Consumer Reports says that the pathetic injury record, along with the absence of any safety standards, put infant slings on that magazine's list of products not to buy for infants.

The magazine repeated its call for a federal government recall of one model, the Infantino SlingRider, on account of the child suffocation risk it poses. Furthermore, it also promised it would publish more information on this timely topic of infant sling hazards in the next few weeks.

(Washington, D.C.) Even though the diabetes drug "Avandia" was implicated in an estimated 83,000 heart attacks between 1999 and 2007, the consumer "protection" agency of the federal government - the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - still allowed the drug to be prescribed and used freely throughout the U.S.; so says a just-released Senate Committee report publicized tonight on national network television newscasts.

According to the Washington Post, Avandia brought in revenues of $2,200,000,000 in 2006 for its manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), making Avandia the company's 3rd-best-selling drug that year.

After reviewing more than one-quarter million pages of documents, the Senate Committee concluded that "GSK was aware of the possible cardiac risks associated with Avandia years before such evidence became public..."

Yet, instead of warning patients sufficiently and promptly alerting the FDA of the problems, the Committee found that GSK bosses instead intimidated independent doctors and concentrated on manipulating the findings about Avandia causing increasing risk of cardiovascular events. Said the report, GSK even attempted to minimize the good news about the positive effect - reducing cardiovascular risks - that its rival's pharmaceutical, ACTOS, had demonstrated. (Senate Committee report, @ pp.14-15.)

Outlined in a black box, GSK's website said this about Avandia:

"WARNING: CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE AND MYOCARDIAL ISCHEMIA"

In that warning box, GSK goes on to warn of -

• the need to monitor carefully for heart failure symptoms after Avandia dosage increases;

• its recommendation that symptomatic heart failure patients avoid Avandia; and

• Avandia's relationship to angina or heart attack.