SCOTUS could further neuter American legal rights

First, earlier this year, the Supreme Court stripped Americans of most rights of suing medical equipment manufacturers. Now, this fall, just before election time, it could keep you and I from suing Big Pharma. In what has to be Big Ph’s wet dream, here’s what’s coming down the pike:

In October, the court is expected to take up a more far-reaching case, Levine V. Wyeth, that could stop most lawsuits involving drugs. The court will examine the legality of a lawsuit preemption quietly written into an innocuous FDA labeling law in 2006. The author was Daniel Troy, then the FDA counsel, now an industry lobbyist. With major cuts in food and drug safety inspections, the take-home message, increasingly, is caveat emptor. Watch out for yourself, because the government won’t.

That “Wyeth,” of course, would be Big Pharma charter member Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

As the linked story points out, it’s just the latest installment of how the Food and Drug Administration has gotten itself put ever more securely in the financial and regulatory hip pocket of Big Pharma.