Drug Executive Faces Manslaughter Charges

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/business/drug-executive-faces-manslaughter-charge.html

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A French court brought manslaughter and injury charges on Tuesday against a drug executive and six companies in a case involving a diabetes and weight-loss drug that caused cardiovascular damage, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said.

The executive, Jacques Servier, 90, and six companies of the Servier group are accused of having known the risks associated with the drug, Mediator, which they produced and marketed until French authorities ordered it withdrawn in 2009, the spokeswoman, Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, said.

Mr. Servier has been ordered to pay almost $100,000 in bail, while the companies have each been ordered to pay about $520,000. Investigators believe Mediator may have caused as many as 2,000 deaths in France. Two related weight-loss products made by the Servier pharmaceutical group were at the center of the fen-phen scandal of the late-1990s in the United States.