Japan Press Weekly

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2011 January 5 - 11 [WELFARE]

2 courts urge settlement on ‘Iressa’-induced deaths

The Tokyo and the Osaka District courts on January 7 recommended that the government and AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical firm, assume the responsibility of giving relief to victims of an anti-cancer drug and pay them settlement money.

Plaintiffs and their legal team welcomed the recommendation as epoch-making in terms of preventing drug-related health damages.

The district courts in the recommendation point out that the government and AstraZeneca should give relief to patients who have developed interstitial lung disease as a side effect of the anti-lung cancer medication “Iressa”, calling on the two defendants to promptly and fairly make an all-out settlement.

The victims in 2004 had filed lawsuits to claim compensation against the government as it approved the drug and AstraZeneca as it imported the drug.

Head of the plaintiffs’ group Chikazawa Akio said, “It has taken six years since I first took the case to court. I now feel relieved. I want the defendants to accept the court recommendation.” His daughter died at the age of 31 after just one and a half months after her first “Iressa” dose. “Japan needs a system regulating adverse side effects so that people suffering from cancer can receive cancer treatment without undue anxiety,” he wept.

In July 2002, the government approved the anticancer drug “Iressa”, for the first time in the world, just in five months after AstraZeneca submitted a new drug application. The drug firm promoted the product as a wonder drug with minimum side effects, but it caused 180 deaths in six months and 557 deaths in two and a half years after it obtained approval. As of September 2010, the death toll has reached 819.