Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Summary

William Daubert, his wife and two children filed a petition to the Supreme Court of the United States against Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. The petitioners alleged that birth defects caused in their two children were due to the side effects of a Bendectin, a prescription anti-nausea drug, ingested by the mother during pregnancy. The respondent produced 30 published research papers involving 130,000 patients and a testimony from a credentialed epidemiologist stating that this drug had no links with teratogenicity. The petitioners submitted their own re-analyses reports based on the studies and experiments of other 8 renowned epidemiologists establishing that this drug had shown teratogenicity. Court rejected the admissibility of the re-analyses based on Frye case. As per this case the petition of such nature can be only deemed fit for admissibility if it is generally acceptable for all cases of such nature. In this case, the evidence of the petitioners was not satisfactory to be applied generally as their data was less as compared to the …show more content…
In addition to it, court should have called concerned authorities on registration of the drugs to submit the complete safety data in all aspects. Court should also have called the physician who prescribed this drug to the mother and ask him/her whether the mother was prescribed with any other drug in combination with Bendectin. Complete laboratory tests of the mother should have been done to check the traces of substance(s) other than Bendctin.
This case leaves curiosities in minds. If everything was properly done by the pharmaceutical company, then why did the respondent recall the drug from the market afterwards? Why was the Frye Case abolished later on if there were no irregularities observed in this particular case? How it became possible that Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals marketed a drug without completing safety