Although Bayer has agreed to remove remaining stocks of Trasylol from the U.S. market, patients who are at a higher risk for blood loss during heart bypass surgery and who have no acceptable alternative treatment may be given Trasylol. However, a doctor must first verify that the “benefits of the drug clearly outweigh the risks for their patients.”

Yesterday, the BART study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers found that heart surgery patients who were given Trasylol were 53 percent more likely to die than patients who were given comparable and cheaper blood clotting drugs.

On May 14, Bayer notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it will begin removing remaining Trasylol stock from the American market, most of which is in warehouses and in the possession of hospitals and physicians.

Bayer should have taken this step long ago.

That’s the conclusion reached in the long-awaited Canadian study on Trasylol, known generically as aprotinin, announced today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In an editorial that accompanied the BART study, Dr. Wayne Ray and Dr. Michael Stein of Vanderbilt University wrote:

“Thus, in all likelihood, this is the end of the aprotinin story.”

On May 9, the FDA sent out a notice requesting “health professionals and facilities review and examine all drug/device storage areas, including emergency kits, dialysis units and automated drug storage cabinets to ensure that all recalled heparin products have been removed and are no longer available for patient use.”

The information was disclosed to investors in a Wachovia filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 12.

According to the filing, the SEC and several state regulators have requested information concerning the underwriting, sale and subsequent auctions of municipal auction-rate securities and auction-rate preferred securities. Wachovia admitted that it fully anticipates further investigation.

The request was made as part of a House subcommittee probe into the circumstances surrounding more than 81 deaths in the U.S. linked to contaminated heparin. The FDA refused to identify the Chinese suppliers, claiming that a confidentiality agreement bars them from releasing the information.

In “Drug safety crisis hits home,” Claire Panosian Dunavan relates her cousin’s recent experience after she received heparin in a U.S. hospital. The cousin, Laura, was rushed to the emergency room after a dangerous blood clot known as a deep vein thrombosis, a serious condition that can cause death, was discovered. To counteract the clot, she was given the blood thinner heparin.

Dunavan writes:

“As soon as a nurse started her anticoagulant drip, Laura thought she was dying.

‘I never felt so terrible in my life,’ she later recalled. Sweaty and breathless, her chest and bowels heaving, she pressed her call button and yelled for help.’”

NEWS RELEASE

May 9, 2008

St. Louis, MO – The law firm of Carey & Danis LLC has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of persons who purchased auction rate securities from UBS AG (NYSE: UBS), UBS Securities LLC and UBS Financial Services Inc. between May 8, 2003 and Feb. 13, 2008 and who continued to hold the securities as of Feb. 13, 2008.

The class action lawsuit, Bonnist v. UBS AG, et al., 08 CIV 4352, is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit alleges that UBS AG and its subsidiaries UBS Securities and UBS Financial Services violated Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by deceiving investors about the investment characteristics of auction rate securities and the auction market in which the securities are traded.

Last November, Canada’s Competition Bureau searched the offices of several candy makers as part of a pricing probe. Search-warrant affidavits submitted by Canadian investigators alleged that top executives of the Hershey Co., Mars and Nestlé met in coffee shops and restaurants and at conventions to set prices.

In February, the German Federal Cartel Office raided the offices of seven chocolate makers, many of the same ones already under investigation in Canada.

While the U.S. Department of Justice has not confirmed that it has started an investigation, several companies have admitted that they have been contacted by federal investigators.

“Some $300 billion worth of investors’ funds – advertised as being as easy as pie to cash in – are still locked up. And brokerage firms that got investors into this mess are doing little to help.”

The article, “How to Clear a Road to Redemption,” notes that even as investors face a financial meltdown due to the frozen markets, broker-dealers are still gorging themselves at the fee trough. That’s because the broker-dealers who agreed to run the auctions still earn fees even though 70 percent of the weekly auctions are failing.

According to a Reuters news story, Wenning also stated that the company would vigorously defend the suits.

The suits were filed in Florida federal court by attorneys with the St. Louis-based law firms Carey & Danis and The Lowe Law Firm. Brought on behalf of Trasylol (aprotinin) victims and their families, the suits allege that Bayer sold an unsafe drug and failed to warn of the risks associated with its use.

St. Louis – Eight lawsuits have been filed in a federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla., against Bayer AG, the maker of the anti-bleeding drug Trasylol.

The lawsuits were filed April 17 on behalf of alleged Trasylol victims and their families for injuries and deaths that occurred in California, Georgia, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, New Mexico and Wisconsin between 2000 and 2007. Specifically, the suits allege that:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the attorney general’s office is “devoting a lot of resources” to the probe which will include a review of the claims the broker-dealers made about the securities such as whether they were cheap and easily sold investments.

In mid-February, the auctions for the investment instruments failed. That meant investors were unable to sell their securities. To this day, auction-rate securities investors find themselves owning frozen assets.