Jury wrong to find drug company liable for outbreak

Karen Forsyth, Las Vegas

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 | 2:02 a.m.

I am having a hard time grasping the verdict against Teva and Baxter for selling large vials of Propofol to the endoscopy centers — and blaming them for various patients contracting hepatitis C during the procedures.

If the drug companies were to blame, why aren’t there lawsuits nationwide against those drug companies? Surely the endoscopy centers in Las Vegas can’t be the only ones that purchased the large vials.

So, if there aren’t cases of hepatitis C appearing at all centers where the larger vials were sold across the country, it stands to reason that it was not the size of the vials that caused the contamination, but the misuse of the vials by the employees at our endoscopy centers. So why blame the drug companies for what the employees did (using the same syringes on multiple patients, thus contaminating the Propofol still in the vials)?

I feel horrible that anyone has become ill because of the actions of the employees at the endoscopy centers, but please put the blame where it belongs, which is not with the drug companies. They merely sold the product; they did not force the endoscopy center employees to misuse the product.

If they did, then yes, they should be held liable. But the way I see it, the jury was way off with this verdict.