New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Law Offices of Scott D. Grossman : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

You have read on this blog my ongoing reporting and analysis of the epidemic of pharmacy errors and the threat to the public that it poses. Well here is a variation on the theme.  Today it was announced on NJ.com, that retail pharmacy chain Rite Aid settled a lawsuit with New Jersey for $475,000 for selling expired over-the-counter medications along with expired infant formulas and baby food. According to the article, 42 Rite Aid stores were found selling expired items throughout New Jersey. If the chain, which also includes Eckerd stores, fails to comply with the terms of the settlement over the next year, it faces an additional $175,000 in penalties.

 Once again, I implore the public to be extra vigilant when shopping at these pharmacies. It is bad enough that we are forced to defend ourselves against prescription errors at the hands of pharmacists and their technicians; now simply going to the shelves for Tylenol or a can of Similac has become a potential health threat to us as well.

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New Jersey car accidents have always been a problem and a local dealership is doing its part to improve motor vehicle safety. According to a Sunbeam article the Pointe Pontiac Buick GMC is offering scholarships to attendees of a driver safety class offered by the AARP at Merion Gardens Assisted Living June 10 and 11. A two day course is being offered which could help lower insurance rates and reduce penalty points on your driver’s license. The AARP requires a $10 cover fee for class materials but the owner of Pointe Pontiac Buick GMC is willing to pay the cost of the entire class. Larry Davis, owner of Pointe Pontiac-Buick-GMC says "We are committed to giving back to our community and this seemed like an ideal fit. We provide transportation and this course helps raise safety awareness which can only benefit our customers and neighbors." The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) does not require for you to be a member or senior citizen to attend classes or qualify for an insurance discount. This program is a great way to improve driving skills and could refresh a lot of driving techniques that may have been forgotten over the years.
 

New Jersey has very busy roads during the summer months especially in Monmouth County. As an attorney representing many motor vehicle accident clients throughout the New Jersey and the Monmouth County area, I ask you to be extra careful driving this summer because the roads will get busy as people travel towards the shore to beat the summer heat. According to AARP, the likelihood of attendees being involved in an auto accident or receiving a traffic ticket should decrease by 15 percent following the completion of the two sessions. Being a Monmouth County and New Jersey injury lawyer I would recommend completing some of these courses to help improve driving safety and to help reduce those outrageously over priced New Jersey auto insurance rates.

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As a pharmacy error attorney, I have witnessed first hand many cases where children and adults are given the wrong medication due to medications have similar names and sizes so they are easily confused by pharmacy staff. In addition, children taken to adult hospitals suffer injuries or fatalities because these hospitals carry mostly adult size doses of medication so when a child is treated, their medication is often confused with the appropriate adult size.

According to an article from the American Medical News, a shocking 11% of child patients have adverse drug events during hospital stays. Most of the results came from children staying in adult hospitals and given adult sized doses instead of the pediatric size. Dr. Sharek, chief clinical patient safety officer at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. said “We are so used to writing pediatric, weight-based doses and when children are being cared for at adult hospitals staffed by adult-based nurses and adult-based pharmacists, that's a type of error that could theoretically occur a lot more frequently." The American Medical News goes on to say “The Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies more than 15,000 U.S. health care organizations and programs, said in its sentinel event alert that children are at greater risk for adverse drug events. That's because most medications are formulated and packaged for adults, and most hospitals and emergency departments are geared toward caring for adults.” The Joint Commission is further investigating these problems and suggests that hospitals identify and administer pediatric medications. Frank Federico, RPh, said "Medication should be delivered to the nursing unit or available in ready-to-administer fashion. That way, there is less that nurses have to do and less chance for error.”

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In January 2008, Governor Corzine signed a law which allows cities across the state to install cameras at intersections for the purpose of catching folks who run red lights. Here's how it works: you run red light, and the camera would take a color photo of you mid violation. Then you'd get a ticket in the mail. The bill has its share of supporters and detractors. Some say that the cameras are a good thing because they save lives by preventing accidents and the presence of the cameras reduce the number of red light violations. Others contend that the cameras deny alleged violators the right to confront an accuser in court, that they could possibly lead to innocent drivers being charged and overall their presence will do nothing to deter unsafe motorists.

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The results are in! The AAA Clubs of New Jersey biannual transportation survey published the results which revealed that the top five safety issues on our roads are:

1. impaired drivers
2. text messaging while driving
3. big trucks that tailgate
4. aggressive driving
5. using a hand-held cell phone while driving.

New Jersey motorists surveyed also identified the top five driver distractions:
1. reading
2. using a PDA or Blackberry
3. personal grooming
4. talking on a cell phone
5. eating or drinking.

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Hey New Jersey residents... I know you know this already, but as of March 1, 2008, you can be stopped, ticketed and fined for driving while talking on your handheld cell phone. Get a hands free attachment or use the speakerphone option, or better yet, don't use the phone just to catch up with old friends while you are driving.... Remember, driving while distracted is very dangerous and has led to quite a number of auto accidents... According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 80 percent of all crashes are the result of driver inattention.

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This is just too much. After drinking gallons upon gallons of bottled water, only to find that some of the water was coming from other municipalities' water supplies (not the deep pure water spring as those ads led me to believe), and after learning that the plastic bottles the water comes in is either a) killing me slowly from the leaching chemicals and/or b) contributing to the hole in the ozone layer, my family and I decided to purchase a filter that attaches to the water tap on the kitchen sink, thinking we were eliminating 99.99999% of all the bad stuff in the water, presumably that the water treatment plant could not do.... BUT NOW I find that the water we are drinking is chock full o' drugs. DRUGS! Yes, DRUGS!!! Antibiotics, birth control pills, pain killers, anti-convulsion medications...the whole spectrum of prescription and non-prescription drugs. I am aghast, I am shocked and disgusted.... And I feel helpless.

I don't care that the water company swears up and down that their water is safe... I don't believe it. I worry about the long term effects of drinking this water on myself and my family. A recent probe made by the Associated Press revealed that during a five-month investigation, drugs were detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.

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Check out the Consumer Products Safety Commission's website for the latest in recalls and defective products. You can even sign up on their website and get alerts sent to your e-mail address.

Today I received the alert that toy airplanes, cars, and motorcycles recalled by S.U. Wholesale due
to Violation of Lead Paint Standard.

Stay vigilant!

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Earlier this week that members of the New Jersey Assembly have introduced some legislation to enhance toy safety and protect New Jersey consumers. One bill would make it illegal to sell a toy labeled as unsafe by federal or state government. Another bill would mandate that retails remove recalled toys from their shelves within 48 hours of receiving notice of the recall. Potential fines for violating these proposed bills could be as high as $20,000. It’s a very good step in the right direction.

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New York Newsday.com reported earlier this week that despite the almost daily barrage of news of unsafe toys and recalls, stores in New York State are still carrying toys with unsafe levels of lead on their shelves. This is unconscionable, disgusting, and terribly frightening. I have to say that my wife and I are completely baffled by what to buy our son, nephew and nieces for the holidays this year, as everywhere you turn, another toy is deemed unsafe. The Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, ordered a statewide probe that yielded the cold hard facts that many toy retailers were selling recalled toys.

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Yep. It's true, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government agency responsible for  overseeing the safety of food, drugs, medical devices, etc., for the American public, is apparently incapable of doing its job. In damning testimony given before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, witnesses said that the FDA inspects very few foreign pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, and where inspections are actually conducted abroad, they are far less thorough than ones conducted in the U.S. The scary thing is that these foreign drug makers produce about 80 percent of all ingredients used by American drug makers for drugs that are used by the American public. According to the witnesses' testimony, the FDA is required to inspect domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers biannually, but there is no such mandate for foreign drug makers, which when you think about it, it seems counter-intuitive. We inspect companies making drugs etc., on American soil for Americans, but we don't require the same level of scrutiny abroad. And it's not like we can rely on these foreign countries to take the worry out of the scenario for us. Example: the ever growing concern over the safety of Chinese products, from toys, to food, to chemical additives, has added much fuel to this fire. (Remember the Chinese toothpaste laden with a compound used in anti freeze that made its way to our shores?) China does not inspect its chemical companies, not even the ones that export chemical products. It's time to take a stand and demand that this government put the health and safety of its citizens first.

Read more here.

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The New York Times reported that Bayer A.G. announced that it will withdraw one of its medications used in heart surgery, as it was found to increase the risk of death. The drug, Trasylol, administered to heart surgery patients to reduce excessive bleeding, was found to increase death rates by a Canadian medical study. According to the article, researchers from the Ottawa Health Institute stopped a study of Trasylol in 3,000 heart and valve surgery patients two weeks ago because of the increased death rates.  And last year, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study of Trasylol which concluded that the drug increased the risks of kidney failure, heart attack and stroke.

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When I read this story, I was horrified by what happened to a newly pregnant St. Louis woman who went to Walgreens to fill a prescription for prenatal vitamins and was instead given a potent chemotherapy drug that killed her unborn child. The woman and her husband filed a lawsuit seeking some form of justice against the powerful pharmacy chain, alleging that Walgreens failed to properly supervise pharmacy personnel who dispensed the medicine, failed to verify the prescription with her physician, and failed to follow appropriate protocol.

The couple alleges in their complaint that she began to feel ill and began vomiting about a month into her pregnancy and assumed it was morning sickness, all the while taking what she thought were the prenatal vitamins.  About a month later, she miscarried her baby. It is alleged that her unborn child was killed due to the ingesting of the potent chemotherapy drug.  After her miscarriage, she continued to take the chemotherapy drugs (still thinking they were prenatal vitamins) because she believed that the vitamins would prepare her for a subsequent pregnancy. It wasn't until she telephoned Walgreens for a refill that the pharmacist realized the mistake.  Please read the full article.  I implore you to write in about your own personal stories pertaining to pharmacy mistakes and errors and your opinions about what has happened to this couple.

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Late last week, a friend of mine called the office to tell me about a co-worker who fell victim to the ever-increasing incidence of pharmacy error. The co-worker, let’s call her “Janet,” hadn’t been feeling well and visited her physician, who diagnosed a common infection and prescribed a course of antibiotics. Janet filled the prescription at her local chain pharmacy located in Western Monmouth County. Within a day or two after starting the medication, Janet was feeling increasingly sicker, and at one point, thought she was having a stroke, as one side of her body lost all sensation. Janet’s husband rushed her to the emergency room; at first, the ER doctors thought she was suffering from a rare allergic reaction to the antibiotic, but soon learned that the pharmacy filled the prescription with the incorrect dosage, double the dosage originally prescribed by the doctor!

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The Food and Drug Administration just issued another series of recalls. See them below. My fellow American parents, if your children's toys are made in China, just throw 'em out...

1. Children's Metal Jewelry Recalled by TOBY N.Y.C. Due to Risk of Lead Exposure
2. Children's Charm Bracelets Sold by Buy-Rite Recalled Due to Risk of Lead Exposure
3. Thomas and Friends, Curious George and Other Spinning Tops and Tin Pails Recalled By Schylling Associates Due To Violation of Lead Paint Standard
4. Martin Designs Inc. Recalls SpongeBob SquarePants(tm) Character Address Books and Journals Due to Violation of Lead Paint Standard

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