Ozempic: Miracle Drug or Mass Tort?
Touted as a miracle weight loss drug, Ozempic could pose serious health concerns and has been widely reported in the news lately.
Ozempic is a semaglutide drug designed to lower blood sugar in Type 2 diabetics. The drug is also thought to prevent stroke and heart attack incidence in Type 2 adults.
Many have begun using the drug off label for weight loss. It’s considered safe and effective as an off label drug.
The manufacturer, Nova Nordisk, is essentially the only player in the game having the only FDA-approved semaglutide on the market. They’ve pushed to block generic manufacturing as would be expected.
One other manufacturer is Eli Lilly, though it may be alleged their advisement defense is stronger than Nova Nordisk’s. The common side effects are well known and include nausea, vomiting, hospitalization.
Yet some of these side effects are transient and mild. Serious cases involve gastroperisis.
There is a potential for gastroperisis when taking these semaglutide’s off label for weight loss.
Gastroperisis is a condition described as paralysis of their intestines. The drug’s mechanism is designed to delay the process of digestion, but the allegation is it creates danger for the user during this process. The delay in digestion “tricks” the body into feeling full.
Some doctors have said the incidence of gastroperisis is so low it is on balance safe.
Yet the reality cannot be ignored: there is a lot in the public sphere pointing to Ozempic being a miracle drug for weight loss, and rumors of danger persist. So how did this happen?
Nova Nordisk will try to claim they didn’t intend the drug for use by adults other than Type 2 diabetics.
That is the crux of the case: how much did Nova Nordisk and Eli Lilly know about the potential for off label weight loss use? Did they have anything to do with the vast off label use? Plaintiff attorney Paul Pennock has stated “where there is smoke, there’s fire” on a case like this.
In other words, a drug doesn’t rise to the level of off label use without tacit or explicit support from the manufacturer.
And of course there will be the injuries required. Important questions will be type, duration, and severity of symptoms, and did these conditions go away when the plaintiff went off Ozempic?
It’s very early in this potential case. The pool of potential claimants is uncertain, as are the requirements for a compensable case. We will keep an eye on the case development as more information becomes available.
Reach out if you have any interest in working on this case. Nothing in this article shall be construed as legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is formed by virtue of what is written in the article and the opinions expressed herein.
