Patients who suffer adverse effects from medical treatments that had been approved by studies written by ghost-writers or “guest authors” in medical journals may be able to bring a fraud lawsuit against the writers, according to a recent essay in PLoS Medicine.
According to MedPage Today, an essay written by Dr. Xavier Bosch, PhD, of the University of Barcelona in Spain and two U.S.-based colleagues, outlined how medical essays written by guest authors that contain data that is false or manipulated in regard to medical products could be the basis of a fraud lawsuit using many different types of litigation.
One avenue of litigation explained by Bosch is the ability to bring a lawsuit against the nominal authors of ghostwritten articles if they contain false or misleading information. If an individual undergoes a medical treatment that is approved in a medical paper, but ends up causing adverse health effects that the paper ignored, a personal injury lawsuit against the writer is a possibility.
"We argue that when an injured patient's physician directly or indirectly relied upon a journal article containing false/manipulated safety and efficacy data, then ... the authors of that article, including guest authors, are legally liable for patient injuries and could be named as defendants," Bosch and colleagues wrote in their essay, according to MedPageToday.
If you or a loved one have been harmed by medical procedure that has worsened a medical procedure it was supposed to help, there may be grounds for a personal injury lawsuit. Contact Sokolove Law today for a free legal consultation.