Illinois Deserves the Truth

Federal Agencies letting manufacturers off the hook

With special interest and big business spending millions of dollars lobbying to take away the courts from consumers - you would think that federal agencies should do their part to protect consumers and hold wrongdoers accountable.  But if you thought this... you would be WRONG.  Unfortunately, as this Chicago Tribune article points out, federal agencies, under the Bush Administration, are being criticized for doing their fair share of screwing over consumers and protecting their Fat Cat friends.  These agencies are "rule making" people out of the right to hold wrongdoers accountable in the civil justice system, by making it tougher (or in some cases impossible) to bring suit against a manufacturer if the product was approved by a federal agency.

As Joan Claybrook, a former head of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who now runs Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, put it:

"Liability puts a burden [on companies] to be very careful ... and not cut corners,"... "Without that, manufacturers will literally get away with murder."

When she ran NHTSA, Claybrook said, the agency did not try to regulate for every situation. Instead, she said, it assumed companies also did their own testing to ensure the safety of their products. If they didn't, they could pay the price in court.

"Federal standards are not all-encompassing," she said. "Liability fills the gaps."

Even though these rules are bad, Congress has the power to step in and pass laws preventing these agencies from cutting off consumers from the courts. It is unlikely that this administration would sign them, since they were the ones prodding these agencies to make these awful rules in the first place.  Let's hope that Congress and the new administration (whomever it will be) acts to prevent manufacturers from getting away with murder. 

To read more about this issue click here.

House passes toy warning labels

Yesterday Illinois took a step toward better protections for children (and adults who like toys).  The house passed HB 5789, which now moves on to the Senate.  This bill would require warning labels on toys and other children’s products with lead levels exceeding pediatrician’s recommended levels of 40 parts per million.

Sponsoring Rep. Naomi Jakobsson (D-Urbana) said labeling requirements can let parents decide whether to buy a product that contains lead, a substance that has been shown to cause anemia and kidney damage at high levels.

The toy industry is fighting this legislation tooth and nail, but considering last year's run of product recalls and accidental deaths, how could you be against it?  As the Springfield editorial board noted earlier this week, this is definitely a “better safe than sorry” issue.  Hopefully the Senate agrees and passes this important legislation.

Parents to Congress: Stop Toying with Lead Paint!

Cross posted from The Pop Tort by John Guyette.

Families from around the country whose lives have been changed forever by unsafe, lead contaminated toys are in Washington D.C. today urging members of Congress to enact the strongest possible reforms to better protect children.  Joining them in their efforts is CJ&D Executive Director Joanne Doroshow.  Consumer product safety legislation has already passed through both houses.  These families want to make sure that key safety measures in the landmark legislation are preserved during the final stages of negotiations.  Among the reforms that they are calling for are:

1. Making toys safe by the 2008 Holiday Season, by requiring manufacturers to comply with stricter lead standards for children's toys, within 180 days.
2. Ensuring that all toys for children 12 years old and younger are included, and covered under the law.
3. Keeping parents informed of dangerous and recalled toys through the creation of an online product safety database.
4. Increasing fines for toy companies that break the law to $20 million dollars.

Check out the story of a Georgia mother who plans on introducing her son to members of Congress today to get these reforms passed.

Enough with the pharma ads!

I wanted to share an insightful editorial from this morning's St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Everyone knows how crazed drug manufacturers are over advertising to consumers.  It's no surprise, since their efforts are successfully undermining physician authority and bloating the industry.

One recent medical study found that advertising is creating markets for drugs that would otherwise not exist. It's one reason that more than half of all insured Americans are taking at least one prescription medication for chronic health problems.

The number of direct-to-consumer ads more than doubled between 2003 and 2007. Among them was a campaign for the cholesterol drug Vytorin...

Ads for the drug, made jointly by Merck and Schering-Plough, were pulled in January after release of a study that showed Vytorin is no more effective at reducing cholesterol build-up than a cheaper drug called Zocor, which is available as a generic.

Merck and Schering-Plough sat on that study for two years, advertising heavily the whole time. Last year, after data had been collected but before it was released, Vytorin rang up sales of $5.1 billion.

The editorial goes on to stress the importance of efforts currently on the legislative agenda.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has sponsored a bill that would ban consumer advertising for the first three years a new drug is on the market. That would give regulators time to better assess its potential risks. The idea is endorsed by Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports.

A Senate committee today will is scheduled to hear testimony on a proposal to require that all drug ads list a telephone number where consumers can file reports about drug side-effects...

The FDA must do a better job of policing drug ads. But it won't until Congress gives it the tools it needs. Lawmakers should do so without delay.

Kudos to the Post-Dispatch editorial board for such a strong endorsement.

New Bill Seeks to Hold Foreign Manufacturers Accountable for Unsafe Products

Cross posted from The Pop Tort by John Guyette

There are good ideas and there are great ideas.  For example...cheese - good idea.  Cheese in a can - great idea!  Well perhaps not everyone agrees with me on this.  But most would agree that corporations should not get off scott-free when their products maim, injure or kill consumers.  Corporate accountability - good idea.  Actually introducing and enacting legislation that holds corporations accountable for faulty products that hurt consumers - great idea!

Thankfully, Congress moved one step closer to better protecting American consumers hurt by products from foreign manufacturers.  Like the toys that contain excessive amounts of lead paint or the bad batches of the drug thinning drug, heparin.  Today, U.S. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee Chair Linda Sánchez put the cheese in a can so to speak by introducing the "Protecting Americans from Unsafe Foreign Products Act." In addition to Conyers and Sánchez, the bill has three other original co-sponsors.  Sounds like a great idea to me.

I only hope the rest of Congress and the President realize the merit of this legislation.  Corporations whether at home or abroad just like everyone else should be held accountable for the damage they cause.  It just makes sense!

If it's broke, fix it.

Another recall of 2.4 million dangerous toys. Sounds like old news, right?  But disturbingly it is not.  To highlight this recall, some of the toys recalled were sent as replacements for other recalled toys.  It is enough to make your head spin. 

In May, the Chicago Tribune conducted an investigative report into the death and injury from high powered "candy sized" magnets from toys that where consumed by children.  This investigation spurred the governement to act and recall these toys.  As part of this toy recall, the makers of the dangerous toys, Mega Brands, sent out "safer toys" as replacements.  As of this Monday, March 17, these replacement toys have also been recalled.  It begs the question, who is supposed to be making sure that our children toys are safe? 

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is the governmental agency charged with investigating and recalling dangerous products, but as the Tribune report showed the CPSC's "failure to act promptly on reports of the deadly hazard was emblematic of how the docile and underfunded agency failed to protect children."  (A recent report (membership required), released by CJ&D, highlights administrative agencies that have been weakened under the Bush Administration and have deteriorated consumer protections.)   

This is why it has become so important to let the civil justice system hold wrongdoers and makers of unsafe products accountable to victims and their families. 

To find out more about recalled children's products visit Kids in Danger. To find out about how the civil justice system can hold wrongdoers accountable visit The Center for Justice & Democracy.

False Advertising

Cross posted from The Pop Tort by John Guyette.

So what’s wrong with spending $258 million on advertising – if it brings in $12.7 billion in sales?  Sounds like a good investment right? 

Ok, ok, so what if after two years of this advertising campaign you pull the ads because they are frequently criticized for being inaccurate and misleading.  Check out today’s article in the New York Times but what I want to know is where is the FDA in all of this? I mean if we're thinking about giving up our right to take drug companies to court and relinquish all health and safety oversight to the FDA (thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court) shouldn’t they care that millions of advertising dollars gives an accurate portrayal of a drug?

Sadly, the answer is no.  Almost a decade ago the FDA relaxed its rules on drug advertising so there is less accountability for pharmaceutical companies in honest and accurate promotion of their drugs.

Manufacturers, CPSC tardy in notifying public

When a company discovers that a product is defective they are required to report that information to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) which in turn notifies the public.  But a recent study from consumer rights organization Public Citizen reveals that both manufacturers and the CPSC often wait months or even years before making this information known.  Between the two delays, consumers may still be using a product long after it has been found to be defective enough to recall.  This is especially frightening when you consider some of the products Public Citizen studied:

The products included coffee makers and vacuum cleaners prone to catching fire, treadmills that spontaneously accelerated to an Olympic miler’s pace, all-terrain vehicles with throttles that became stuck in the “go” position, bicycles with forks that could break under normal use, and infant swings that could cause strangulation and were implicated in the deaths of six infants.

Read the press release for Hazardous Waits: CPSC Lets Crucial Time Pass Before Warning Public About Dangerous Products.