Suits Charge Conspiracy by Maker and Doctors' Group to Expand Ritalin Use
By BARRY MEIER [NYT]
Lawyers involved in class-action lawsuits against the tobacco industry, gun makers and health maintenance organizations filed two lawsuits yesterday against another target, the widely used drug Ritalin.
The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in California and New Jersey, say the Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the drug's manufacturer, and the American Psychiatric Association, a professional group, conspired to create a market for Ritalin and expand its use.
For more than a decade, Ritalin has been increasingly prescribed for children in whom attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has been diagnosed. That has prompted debate among scientists, psychiatrists and government officials over whether children are receiving too much medication or their behavioral disorders are being diagnosed incorrectly.
Officials of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Novartis AG, and the American Psychiatric Association said they could not comment on the lawsuits because they had not seen them.
But representatives of each group said the accusations in the new lawsuits sounded similar to those in a class-action lawsuit brought against them earlier this year in Texas.
At that time, Novartis said Ritalin, which is also known by its chemical name methylphenidate, had been used safely and effectively in thousands of children for more than 40 years and that it was the most studied drug used for attention deficit hyperactive disorder.
The psychiatric association called the accusations in the Texas suit "groundless" and an "opportunistic attack on the scientific process that underlies this effort."
The new lawsuits seek to halt what they call unlawful practices and ask that profits from sales of the drug be returned to consumers.
One of those bringing the latest lawsuits is Richard Scruggs, a lawyer from Pascagoula, Miss., who represented dozens of states in actions brought in recent years against cigarette makers. Earlier this year, Mr. Scruggs also filed lawsuits against several health maintenance organizations charging that they had defrauded consumers by failing to provide them with treatments.
John Coale, a Washington lawyer who is also involved in the Ritalin lawsuits, said the litigation was brought because Novartis and the psychiatric group promoted the idea that many children had attention deficit order and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a way of expanding the market for the drug.
"They were giving this stuff away like candy," Mr. Coale said.
In March, the White House announced an effort to reverse a sharp increase in the number of preschool children using Ritalin, Prozac and other psychiatric drugs. |
