Category Archives: Defective Products

The New York Times recently reported that DePuy Orthopaedics, the makers of recalled metal hip implants, had been phasing out the device about one year before the voluntary hip replacement recall. DePuy, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, claimed this action was due to low sales and not safety issues. Some patients who received the DePuy Acetabular System (also known as ASR) began experiencing pain after the device was implanted. It was later shown that the metal hip implant was shedding metal debris into the patients’ bodies, damaging the surrounding tissues and bones. Approximately 13 percent of the DePuy hip implants began failing in patients within five years, much less than their touted 15 year life span. DePuy voluntarily recalled the hip implants in August of 2010. But did DePuy know about the problems a year before? In August of 2009, the FDA wrote a letter to DePuy where it…
Read More »

Posted in Defective Drug Recalls, Defective Products | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Pharmaceutical companies not only release defective drugs upon the unknowing public, but defective medical products as well. The New York Times reported that pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson decided to sell its defective DuPuy hip implants to unknowing consumers overseas, since the artificial hip implant was banned by the FDA for sale in the United States in 2010. The reason for the FDA ban on the hip implant is that it was faulty by design. Marketed under the name ASR (articular surface replacement device) by the DuPuy orthopedic division of Johnson & Johnson, the all-metal hip replacement implant had a high premature failure rate in patients. The faulty implant also sheds tiny particles of metallic debris, crippling the very people it is supposed to have healed. Hip implant surgery is extremely invasive and the recovery time is long and painful, even when the surgery goes well. It is unconscionable that…
Read More »

Posted in Defective Drug Recalls, Defective Products | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A new study on transvaginal mesh implants published in the January edition of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology confirms an already widely-held belief: that women implanted with the devices to treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP) usually require additional surgery more often than women treated by other methods. This blog has been closely following stories regarding women who have been implanted with these potentially defective products and the consequences thereof. This new study looked at 32 women who had transvaginal mesh implants to correct POP and 33 women who had their POP treated by other methods. They found that 15.6 percent of women with the implant needed corrective surgery within one year of implantation. The study further concluded that women treated by other means saw a comparable reduction in symptoms over the implant patients. Since 2008, the FDA has received approximately 3,000 complaints regarding transvaginal mesh implants and have…
Read More »

Posted in Defective Products | Tagged , , | Leave a comment