Topanga Canyon girl testifies about Motrin injuries

The girl suffered chemical burns in her eyes and every orifice of her
body after her parents gave her three doses of Children's Motrin for a slight
fever in 2003, when she had come home from Topanga Elementary School with a
fever. The reaction sent her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where even doctors
did not know about medical links between the active ingredient in Motrin --
ibuprofen -- and the severe reaction called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.
   A lack of warnings to consumers, and the fact that physicians were not
given warnings about the remote possibility of such a violent reaction until
2005, is at the heart of the five-week-long trial of the lawsuit.
   The suit accuses Johnson & Johnson and its family of subsidiary
companies of putting sales of its ibuprofen pain killer -- worth $1 billion in
profits per year -- ahead of the extremely rare possibility that a person can
be blinded, or killed, as a result of an allergic reaction that is not
mentioned on the product's label.
   Johnson & Johnson lawyers have contended that the product is safe, and
that warning labels on the box and inside the packaging adequately warned
caregivers that they should consult doctors if any change of medical condition
occurs after giving a young person Children's Motrin. During opening statements
last week, company attorneys said they will prove that the drug did not cause
Sabrina Johnson's illness.
   ``That's my little girl, every day,'' Sabrina's father, Kenneth Johnson,
testified earlier today as he pointed to a large photo of his daughter
clasping blankets tightly to her head as she sat in a dark room. Sabrina
endured a two-week hospital stay in which she was in excruciating pain or a
morphine haze, her father said.
   ``I thought we were going to lose her,'' Kenneth Johnson said.
   Kenneth Johnson, an engineering manager at a top-secret Raytheon
government electronics project, said he read the Motrin label before buying it
and before dispensing it, and was given no warning that it could cause the
severe ibuprofen reaction known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.
   ``I'm scared to death now that my daughter will end up in some apartment
in some city, on a government subsistence check ... and that scares me to
death,'' Johnson said, choking back tears.
   Johnson & Johnson lawyers agreed today with the family's attorneys that
the girls medical bills over the last five years totaled $534,000.
   On the witness stand today, a former company executive testified that
the firm and its subsidiary, McNeil, knew that as many as 20 people had been
blinded, killed or seriously injured by Children's Motrin between the time it
was put on the over-the-counter market in the 1990s, and when Sabrina Johnson
was given three doses of it in 2003.
   Anthony R. Temple, who was executive medical director for Johnson &
Johnson's McNeil Consumer Products subsidiary, said he was also aware that more
than 40 cases of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome occurred in the years after doctors
at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center told the Topanga Canyon family that Motrin had
caused Sabrina's hospitalization, and near-death, and continued terrible pain.
   Temple also said the company did not add warnings to the product label
after an extensive clinical trial found that it could cause a severe allergic
shock -- similar to a violent bee sting reaction -- in more than 5 out of every
100,000 children given the drug.
   The label warnings were made more severe after doctors petitioned the
federal government to add tougher language in 2005. Language about the symptoms
of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome was added to Children's Motrin sold via
prescriptions, but not the same drug sold over-the-counter, Temple said.
   Attorneys from the drug company had no questions for their former
employee, who has now retired, but said they may recall Temple when they put on
their rebuttal case.
   Sabrina Johnson tried to watch on television as her lawyer played
videotape of her testimony before a Food and Drug Administration advisory
committee in Washington, where the little girl implored rulemakers to ``please
do something  so other children don't get hurt by Stevens-Johnson Syndrome like
me. People really need to know about that.''
   Sabrina said she is learning Braille and hopes to become a pediatrician
or a veterinarian. At her lawyer's request, she sang a song with the chorus
``It's possible, anything is possible.''
   Johnson & Johnson's attorneys had no questions.
   After testifying, the girl picked up her stuffed dog -- named Mikey --
and greeted the 16 members and alternates of the jury pool as she was guided
out of the courtroom on her lawyer's arm.
   The trial is expected to last another four weeks, attorneys said.

CNS-06-30-2008 15:29