What did Bayer know?

According to the lawsuit filed by Laurie Simpson, a former Bayer strategic research analyst, Bayer allegedly engaged in illegal and deceptive marketing practices by exaggerating Baycol's effectiveness, while downplaying its dangers and concealing important safety information from consumers. Simpson had discovered much damaging information about Baycol while employed at Bayer, but was instructed to remove it from her reports as the company was concerned about future litigation.

The lawsuit also alleges that Bayer provided kickbacks to doctors in order to have them prescribe Baycol to their clients and that the company had false articles written and published in prestigious medical journals to downplay the drug's risks.

When did they know it?

Baycol was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1998 and pulled from the market in 2001 when the FDA announced that Bayer Pharmaceutical Division was voluntarily withdrawing the drug (also known as cerivastatin) from the U.S. market because of reports of sometimes fatal rhabdomyolysis, a severe muscle adverse reaction from the cholesterol-lowering (lipid-lowering) product.

According to the lawsuit, Bayer allegedly knew about the dangers of Baycol as early as 1997 – a year before it even went on the market and continued receiving damaging safety information for the three years it was on the market. Thousands of injuries and deaths have been linked to the drug.

An emerging pattern?

Bayer AG also manufactures Trasylol, a drug used to limit bleeding in heart and other surgeries that was on the U.S. market for 14 years. Trasylol was pulled from the market in late 2007 after it was linked to serious side effects and possibly thousands of deaths.

Like Baycol, industry and legal experts say that Bayer knew about the problems linked to Trasylol years ago, but chose not to act. Dr. Dennis Mangano published a study in January 2006 that found Trasylol use doubled patients' risk of kidney failure, heart failure and had a 181 percent increase in the risk of stroke. He claims that Bayer knew about these issues many years ago, but refused to take the drug off the market – a decision that may have caused over 20,000 patients to die in vain from the time the study was released and the time that Bayer pulled Trasylol off the market.

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