Brian Bilbray: “tonight we are speaking a lot about lawyers, a lot about corporations, a lot about pharmaceutical companies, but we are…”

“tonight we are speaking a lot about lawyers, a lot about corporations, a lot about pharmaceutical companies, but we are talking about consumers only as victims. However, the victimization goes both ways, Mr. Chairman. We hear a lot about the things that go wrong in our society when people use products. We hear about the bad things that the consumer products do. However, Mr. Chairman, we do not talk about the fact, about the woman who goes to her pharmacist to be able to get a drug that she has used for years, but that drug no longer is available to her, not because the FDA found it not safe, not because a court found that it was not safe, but because of the huge liability that was being created by lawsuits that were being brought forward without merit, but with substantial resources, to the point where they were driving these products off the market. Mr. Chairman, for years Bendectin has been used by pregnant women for a long time, and it is not available today for one reason, and that is because of lawsuits.”