Berezofsky held up a Barbie doll in court as she accused American Home Products of promoting their diet drug by using the social pressure placed on women to look thin. Since the drug has been off the market for two years and none of the plaintiffs have developed any symptoms, they are in the clear, he says. The trial continues today with the plaintiff's first expert, Dr. Harris Busch a pharmacology professor at Houston's Baylor University, on the stand. Busch also testified against American Home Products last month in the Texas case. The plaintiffs will also call Dr. Mark Detsch, the company's medical affairs director, to testify next week.
Tobacco use causes emphysema, cancers and chronic pulmonary diseases.
Early detection will help save lives. Bottinelli says he'll file a class-action suit seeking medical monitoring and cessation programs for New Jersey's 1.75 million smokers. But it will be an uphill battle. In November, a week before the state Attorney General's Office accepted the tobacco settlement, a Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel dismissed a class-action medical monitoring suit brought on behalf of two million Pennsylvania smokers. In Barnes v. The American Tobacco Co. , 97-1844, the court held the case could not proceed as a class action because it entailed too many issues relating to whether each smoker was addicted to nicotine.