Paul François, a farmer in Charente, finally knows that a fight against a multinational agrochemicals is not always lost in advance. The victims of prescribed opioids Do you want some here in the United States can they regain hope when they learn that a pharmaceutical company has pleaded guilty to a painkiller that has led to death by addiction and overdose of 470,000 Americans for twenty years? In the ever renewed war of the clay pot against the iron pot, Wednesday October 21 will be marked with a white stone on the health front.
At the end of fourteen years of legal battle, Mr. François lived “A great deliverance” : the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal brought by Monsanto, which challenged the intoxication of the farmer by its herbicide Lasso in 2004. It does not rule on the toxicity of the product, still denied by the firm, but on its failures in the information for the use of the Lasso. A rejection, at length motivated, which makes final the conviction in France of the American company acquired by the German Bayer in 2018. “There will be a before and after this trial. It shows that a simple citizen can convict a multinational ”, reacted Mr. François, who is now fighting for compensation ” fast “.
This criminal conviction, the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma seeks to escape it in the context of a civil transaction with the plaintiffs ready to accept it. In this case, in the United States, the Department of Justice, more than 20 states and more than 2,000 counties, towns and individuals, all affected by the ravages of Oxycontin, the opioid pain medication of society. owned by the wealthy and highly controversial Sackler family.
“Greed”
Purdue announced on Wednesday that he was pleading guilty to several counts. Its leaders admit having ignored the warnings of the Food and Drug Administration, which controls food and pharmaceutical products, and turned a blind eye to the excesses of its salespeople, who harassed doctors and paid bribes to the most corrupt . The company from Samford (Connecticut) says it is ready to pay 8.3 billion dollars (7 billion euros).
Will it be able to do so, when it applied in September 2019 to benefit from the bankruptcy law (Chapter 11) to continue its restructuring? The company will be reborn as a company dedicated to ” good public “, refocus the sale of Oxycontin on the right indications, provide treatment for overdose or dependence without making a profit and finance local community programs to repair the health damage.
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