ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER
Americans Increasingly At Risk
Contaminants In Foreign-Sourced Ingredients
There is a new reality in where our medications come from — a growing reliance on foreign manufacturers to provide the raw ingredients for those drugs. According to FDA data, roughly 85 percent of the facilities manufacturing the ingredients in American drugs are located overseas, many from China and India where production costs are low and experts say government oversight is less stringent. The shift has contributed to a flood of recent recalls and fueled escalating concerns about the safety of medicines consumed in the U.S. Just since last summer, drug companies have announced a total of 45 recalls of generic blood pressure medications alone.
American consumers are at risk in huge numbers. For just two of the recalled blood pressure medications, valsartan and losartan, the demand for those drugs suggest recalls for the tainted medications could reach into the millions.[1] In 2016, 1.6 million people purchased valsartan and 9.2 million bought losartan, according to data provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “This is troubling to us, and we know it’s troubling to the public,” the FDA said in a statement. “The concern is appropriate.” Experts said the contaminants are still powerful at low levels.
Pharmaceutical insiders may have information regarding contaminants or other adulteration of drugs sold by their employers. Because the government pays for so many of our medications through Medicare, Medicaid and other government health programs, payments for these tainted drugs may constitute false claims against the government. Whistleblowers are rewarded under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3729 et seq., for original information of false claims to the government. The California and San Francisco whistleblower attorneys at Evans Law Firm, Inc. are currently handling one such case against a large pharmaceutical company. We also represent false claims whistleblowers against a variety of other healthcare providers including skilled nursing facilities, medical device manufacturers, labs, clinics, hospitals, and physician groups. If you have credible information for a false claims whistleblower case or any other whistleblower case in California, call us today at (415)441-8669 and we can help.
Contact Us
We recommend you call an attorney before alerting the government with information regarding any false claims. In addition to false claims whistleblower cases, our attorneys also handle whistleblower cases before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for offshore tax avoidance schemes, and securities fraud whistleblower cases before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). If you or a loved one has information regarding false claims in San Francisco or elsewhere in California, offshore tax avoidance schemes against the IRS, or securities fraud in violation of SEC and CFTC regulations, contact Ingrid M. Evans and the other Evans Law Firm whistleblower and false claims attorneys at (415) 441-8669, or by email at <a href=”mailto:info@evanslaw.com”>info@evanslaw.com</a>. Our attorneys have experience with complex financial contracts and large insurance companies. We can help guide your case through a jury trial or toward an equitable settlement. We handle cases involving financial elder abuse, whole life insurance and universal life insurance, and indexed, variable, and fixed annuities.
[1] Evans Law Firm, Inc. is not involved in any cases regarding these medications but do represent whistleblowers with credible information regarding other tainted medications sold in the U.S. You can read a full story about the tainted drugs discussed above here: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/tainted-drugs-ex-fda-inspector-warns-dangers-u-s-meds-n1002971.
