Our Requip Side Effect Lawyers Author an Article Urging Compassion for Parkinson's Disease and RLS Patients Who Took Requip or Mirapex and Developed a Gambling Addition or Other Compulsive Disorder, Explaining Requip Lawsuits.
For those who have reached this page seeking information with regard to Requip lawsuits or our Requip lawyers information with regard to GlaxoSmithKline liability for gambling disorders, please see our Requip Attorneys Main Page. If you or a family member has suffered a gambling addiction or other compulsive disorder which you feel may be associated with his or her use of Requip for Parkinson's Disease or RLS, our Requip attorneys invite you to contact us for a free consultation. Simply fill out the "Requip Attorneys Case Evaluation Request," at the top right aspect of this page and one of our Henke Law Group Requip lawyers will contact you. There is no charge or obligation of any kind for our free attorney consultations.
The following is an article that our Requip lawyers published in a number of Internet venues explaining that the gambling addictions and other compulsive disorders suffered by many Parkinson's Disease and RLS patients resulted from an artificially induced loss of impulse control brought about by this side effect of Requip, and the similar dopamine antagonist, Mirapex. The purpose of the article is to urge compassion for the victims of this drug side effect in a society which has the propensity to condemn gambling addiction and other compulsive disorders as "vices." It is hoped that the article would have some effect to soften the feelings of people who would otherwise blame the victim of Requip and Mirapex drug induced compulsive disorders, so that they could understand better that the societally condemned behaviors were the result of the drugs, not the victims of the side effects.
Requip Side Effect Lawyers Explain Basis For Lawsuits Against GlaxcoSmithKline for Gambling Addictions and Other Compulsive Disorders.
Our Requip lawyers will attempt here to explain to the skeptical the legal basis for the lawsuits against GlaxcoSmithKline, the manufacturer of Requip, for the gambling losses and consequent bankruptcies, divorces, broken families, and psychological and emotional suffering resulting from this dopamine agonist pharmaceutical.
In the view of many, gambling is a vice, and the opinion of those who hold this view is that gamblers should take their losses, just as they would have taken the economic benefit of wins. But in the view of our Requip attorneys, it isn't so simple when a man or woman who has never gambled or has gambled only moderately is given a drug, such as Requip or Mirapex, which alters their brain chemistry so that they lose their "impulse control" to the point where they develop artificially induced obsessive compulsive disorders, including most prominently gambling addictions. These are people who did not have a compulsive gambling disorder before being prescribed Requip, but as scientific studies have demonstrated, after receiving Requip an increased number, above the percentage in any randomly selected population, develop a gambling addiction, and as our Requip lawyers also observe, returned to their normal lives, without a compulsive gambling disorder, as soon as they were taken off Requip or Mirapex.
Our Requip lawyers have reviewed the extant evidence with regard to Requip use and gambling disorders and have concluded that there is ample evidence for the association of Requip and the similar drug, Mirapex, and gambling addiction. Requip is a drug approved by the FDA for the treatment to reduce the motor "tremors" of Parkinson's Disease and Restless Legs Syndrome. Requip serves this function because it is a "dopamine agonist," a drug which mimics the function of this natural "neurotransmitter," dopamine, in the brain. But while natural dopamine and the drug Requip, which mimics dopamine, has important motor functions, useful for these FDA approved indications, the drug's effects on the brain reinforces certain behaviors, including gambling, eating disorders, and intimate relations, by increasing feelings of pleasure, specifically for these activities which humans find "rewarding." As our Requip lawyers have seen it described in the scientific literature, this increased pleasure perceived by the brain associated with these rewarding behaviors, such as the "rush" associated with gambling, lead to obsessions, or obsessive compulsive disorders, and in particular compulsive gambling, as a function of a loss of "impulse control."
The scientific literature with regard to both these dopamine agonists, Requip and Mirapex, is now overwhelming in its indictment of these drugs as responsible in particular for gambling addictions in people who did not suffer from compulsive gambling prior to being prescribed these drugs. Our Requip attorneys refer specifically to studies which are reviewed much more extensively on our " Requip lawyers compulsive gambling addiction" page, finding that these dopamine agonists were associated with gambling addictions as early as 2003, first discovered by the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center, the findings of an increased incidence of gambling addiction which were then replicated by the Mayo Clinic in 2005, followed by additional replication in a large study of 3000 Requip and Mirapex patients finding that 13 percent suffered from at least 1 of 4 identified compulsive behaviors.
In terms of the liability of GlaxoSmithKline, our Requip lawyers have formed the opinion that the manufacturer should have warned of the risk of developing compulsive disorders, including specifically, gambling addiction. While the early studies focused mainly on Mirapex, the manufacturer clearly should have recognized that Requip served the same function - both as dopamine agonists for the same clinical indications - to likely have the same compulsive gambling side effects. The mechanism of action is the same, and the 2008 study then involved both Requip and Mirapex subjects, by then making plain, in the view of our Requip attorneys, that the identification of dopamine agonist complicity in gambling addiction was indisputable.
In the view of our Requip lawyers, those who suffered from Parkinson's Disease or RLS and sought medical care for the tremors associated with their diseases were innocent for failing to understand that the consequence of their use of these dopamine agonists would be the loss of their impulse control, gambling addiction, economic devastation, and broken families. And in the view of our Requip attorneys, this was directly the result of the failure of GlaxcoSmithKline to warn of the risk of gambling addiction. This victims of corporate irresponsibility, in GSK's endeavor to maintain profit for the sale of Requip, should not viewed as suffering from "vice," but rather, suffering innocently from a drug induced compulsive disorder. In the view of our Requip lawyers, the victims of GSK's failure to warn of the gambling addiction side effect of its drug should not be held in contempt, but offered only our compassion.
Ray Henke
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*The results obtained in the cases listed were dependent upon the facts of the cases, and the results will differ in other cases based on different facts
$2.7 million dollar jury verdict in a drug product fraud case in which attorney Henke represented 5 plaintiffs in a single consolidated 4 month trial alleging a conspiracy to defraud his clients with ineffective and dangerous AIDS drugs. Mr. Henke's experts in the case included Luc Montagnier, the discoverer of HIV and head of France's National AIDS Laboratories; Michael Gotlieb, the discoverer of AIDS and co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, Don Francis, the head of the first CDC AIDS Task force and discoverer that AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease, John Curnutte, head of the largest AIDS vaccine project in the world, Roger Detels, Chairman of the Epidemiology Department at UCLA and chief investigator on the largest AIDS epidemiology study in the United States, and a dozen others of the most highly respected AIDS scientists and physicians in the world. Mr. Henke also testified before Congress with regard to these cases, at the invitation of the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives.
$1.5 million dollar settlement in a pharmaceutical product liability birth injury case involving a drug which attorney Henke claimed was the probable cause of the child's birth injuries, based upon the facts that the child's mother's obstetrician provided her a sedative during early pregnancy. Mr. Henke's firm obtained possession of a list of physicians, which included the mother's obstetrician, who served as "investigators" in clinical trials involving a drug which was later determined to have been a very powerful teratogen; and the child was born with limb defects typical of the kind of birth defects which were caused by the particular teratogen. The settlement was achieved despite the fact that the medical records were unavailable 20 years after the birth and retirement of the obstetrician; and the mother did not recall the name of the sedative which was provided to her. Attorney Henke also obtained a $100,000 settlement from the physician who provided her the sedative. The applicable statutes of limitation had long passed by the time the client contacted Mr. Henke's office. Attorney Henke was able to overcome the statute of limitations, over the demurrers of both the pharmaceutical company and physician, by successfully alleging that they had intentionally concealed from the public and from the child's mother that they had distributed the drug.
*The results obtained in the cases listed were dependent upon the facts of the cases, and the results will differ in other cases based on different facts
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We are the Premier California Food Poisoning Lawyers, Ecoli HUS and Listeriosis Attorneys, also representing victims of food poisoning outbreaks nationally.
Spotlight: Our Most Recent Food Poisoning Settlement:: One of our E coli HUS Attorneys obtained one of the largest multimillion dollar settlements ever achieved in an Ecoli HUS case, obtained October 1, 2006.
Consult the Food Poisoning Lawyers page or the E. coli HUS Attorneys page for additional information about the stellar qualifications of our California food poisoning attorney Nick Allis and and food and drug lawyer Henke.
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