Valsartan Recalled For Cancer Causing Chemical Contamination. Lawsuits to Follow

Popular brands of blood pressure and heart medications containing Valsartan have been recalled due to the fact that the Valsartan in the drugs has been contaminated with a known carcinogen called NDMA. Between the failures of the drug companies involved and the regulatory agencies, this dangerous chemical has already found its way into countless patients across the globe. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses the dangers of this medication.

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Transcript

A major medicine recall was recently undertaken by the US FDA as well as 22 other countries across the planet. This recall involved a drug called Valsartan. Now Valsartan is a medication used for blood pressure and heart treatments and what has happened is that during the manufacturing process of this over in China, it’s been contaminated with a cancer causing substance that’s called N-Nitrosodimethylamine, NDMA for short. This chemical is a known cancer causing agent. Even our own FDA, with as dysfunctional as they are, said this is a probably human carcinogen … Excuse me, the EPA called it a probably human carcinogen. This is a very real problem. Thousands of people in the United States alone are taking this medication. And this, unfortunately, is a voluntary recall, meaning, if you want to go turn in your contaminated medicine, you can. If you don’t? Okay. It’s not mandatory.

What gets even worse is the fact that our FDA here, when responding to this Valsartan story and recall and the fact that it contained a cancer-causing agent that also, by the way, can destroy your liver, other countries, 22 other countries, had already taken action on it. Here is a quick excerpt from a CNN article talking about this.

The FDA action came after 22 other countries issued recalls involving 2,300 Valsartan batches sent to Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, The Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France, Poland, Croatia, Lithuania, Greece, Canada, Bosnia, and Hercegovina, [inaudible 00:02:04] and Malta. Now, the US recalls left some patients who take Valsartan containing drugs, scratching their heads over what to do about treatment regimens. Because that’s the other problem. We know they contain this, this cancer-causing agent, the Valsartan, but because of what this medication does for patients, blood pressure, heart medication, they can’t stop taking it until they go see their doctor and either get approved to come off it or get a prescription for something else.

So not only do these people now know that they’re taking the medication that could easily give them cancer or severely damage their liver, causing fibrosis or several other liver conditions here, tumors on the lungs, they have to keep taking it until they go see their doctor because the risks of stopping it suddenly are too great.

So, once again, we have a failure from the companies here that are involved, major pharmaceuticals, Solco Healthcare and Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries, major failure on their part to catch the fact that this chemical had contaminated these batches of heart medications but now the people who understand the risks still have to try to get an appointment, go speak with a doctor and make sure it’s okay for them to be switched to a different medication and, in some cases, it may not be. So they would be stuck taking this medication that they know causes cancer or liver damage or tumors all over the body.

This is, yet again, another failure of both our regulatory agencies who, again, ours only jumped on this after 22 other countries came forward and said, “We’re gonna do something about this.” Finally, the USA FDA said, “Okay, we’ll do something too.” But more importantly, it’s another failure from big pharma. They ship production overseas, they let this drug be made over there so they don’t have to worry with it. Maybe not face our regulators. This is a generic drug so there’s far less scrutiny. They bring it back over here, don’t pay attention to the fact that it’s contaminated. They let people get cancer because of the chemicals inside of it and nothing happens to ’em. That’s the worst part. Nothing happens to them. Nothing happens to these pharmaceutical companies. They don’t go to jail. They don’t get pinged. They’ve already made a ton of money off it so whatever happens, fines, lawsuits, they’re still gonna end up making a profit.

The only thing we can do at this point is to make sure that that profit is a lot lower than it should be so that they know destruction of human lives isn’t worth it and the only way we can do that, like so many other things in this country, is through the court system. Because we can’t depend on companies to do the right thing. We can’t depend on the regulatory agencies to catch these things and we can’t depend on the politicians to do anything about the problem.