Trial Begins in Case of Menopause Drug

Attorneys for a woman who claims she was diagnosed with breast cancer after taking Prempro told a federal jury Wednesday that drug maker Wyeth ignored repeated signals that the menopause drug could cause breast cancer.

Lawyers for Wyeth said in their opening statement that the company warned Linda Reeves and her doctors about the potential breast cancer risks of Prempro and said no one could prove the drug caused her illness.

The trial of Reeves’ lawsuit is the first among 4,500 suits filed nationwide challenging the hormone replacement drug.

Reeves’ case will focus on the pharmaceutical company’s relationship with its customers, said Zoe Littlepage, an attorney for the 67-year-old Benton, Ark., resident.

“This case is about responsibility,” she told jurors during opening statements.

Littlepage showed jurors a cartoon of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand as she said lawyers would provide jurors with internal documents from the drug company about Prempro’s risks.

“You will see signal after signal of people telling Wyeth ... ‘Wow, maybe there’s a breast cancer issue with this combination,’ ” Littlepage said. “Why did Wyeth not do a long-term breast cancer study when the signals were there all along?”

Littlepage and another lawyer for Reeves, Mike Williams, said they planned to introduce witnesses who could prove the links between Prempro and breast cancer and show that Wyeth could have conducted a study on the drug’s breast cancer risks as early as 1983.

“There was a 10-year delay that was Wyeth’s fault for not getting this ... out to doctors,” Williams said. “That delay was all the difference for Linda Reeves.”

They said Reeves was diagnosed with breast cancer after taking Prempro for at least eight years. Reeves’ attorneys said her breast cancer was a type that depended on hormones to grow.

Attorneys for Wyeth said Reeves had said in a deposition that she didn’t read a patient-information slip provided with her prescription that noted a potential breast cancer risk.

Wyeth lawyer Stephen Urbanczyk said the benefits of the drug were outweighed by the potential risks. He noted that Prempro was still available on the market.

“This is not about whether you like a pharmaceutical company or its employees,” Urbanczyk said. “Wyeth met its responsibility in this case.”

Another lawyer for Wyeth, Lyn Pruitt, said that most women who took hormone-replacement therapy never developed breast cancer and that most women who developed breast cancer weren’t on hormone replacement therapy.