(Transcript)

Justin Lovely:  Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Carolina Justice Report sponsored by South Carolina Law TV and the Lovely Law Firm. I’m attorney Justin Lovely here again with my lovely wife and law partner, Amy Lawrence Lovely.

Amy Lawrence:  Hi guys.

Justin Lovely:  And we’re going to wish everybody… Hope they’ve had a good new year and talk to you about some of the legal issues today. Amy, what’s been going on?

Amy Lawrence: So today we’re going to talk about Zantac and what’s going on with all that litigation. I know that you’re right in the mix of everything and that you can answer some of those questions. Tell us what’s going on with Zantac right now. What is Zantac?

Justin Lovely:  Okay. Yeah. So Zantac is a very popular heartburn medication. Zantac is the brand name. Ranitidine is the generic name, the chemical name. And it’s prescribed to millions of people and has been for years. And again, it’s for heartburn. It’s a heartburn medication. And what’s going on right now is it’s been discovered that there is NDMA in Zantac due to their being an unstable molecule. And essentially what NDMA is, that’s a known carcinogen. It’s causing cancer. It’s actually what scientists use to cause cancer in lab rats to do cancer studies. And this is what’s being ingested by everyone who’s taking Zantac or Ranitidine and has been for years.

Amy Lawrence:  So is this why they recalled everything?

Justin Lovely: Well, yeah. So what’s happened is there was an online pharmacy back last September, I believe of last year, just a few months ago, who basically put the FDA on blast and said, Hey, we found this in our studies and this needs to be taken off off the shelves. And so once the FDA was put on notice, several large retailers, your Walgreens, your Rite Aids, your CVSs, they ripped it off immediately, pulled it all off the shelf because they realized wow, we’re putting this in the chain of commerce and we got to get out of this.

Amy Lawrence: Yeah. They’re on notice now and so they’re responsible. So they went ahead and pulled it.

Justin Lovely:  Right. And so essentially the whole issue, go ahead.

Amy Lawrence:  What kind of cancer is it?

Justin Lovely:  Well it’s really any esophageal or stomach cancers. Anything with your digestive tract. I mean liver cancer, kidney cancer, stomach cancers, throat cancers, anything just internally. Because basically what’s happening is that that cancer causing chemical is reacting with your… The unstable molecules reacting with the digestion process, it’s just causing the NDMA to be ingested through the system. So we’re seeing stomach cancers, again, anything with the digestive tracts, even some non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, some blood cancers. A lot of different cancers are related to this. And again, the science is early. These studies are all early. We don’t really know what exactly this is all causing. More studies are on the way to be released. We’re waiting for those results and we’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking at and who could be affected.

Amy Lawrence: So let’s say I have been diagnosed with cancer and I regularly took Zantac, what should I do?

Justin Lovely: And you’ve been diagnosed?

Amy Lawrence: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

Justin Lovely:  Well you obviously need to talk to your doctor about this immediately and stop taking Zantac and let the doctor know that you’ve heard about this in the news. Every time we see these new drug cases come out, a lot of times the doctors are the last to know, which is sad, right, because they’re the ones prescribing all this. So a lot of times it takes a while for even the doctors to be put on notice. But some of these studies are out there and as more come out doctors keep up to speed on all of this and it’s all going to be taken off the shelf and hopefully they stop prescribing this.

Amy Lawrence: Well, how can a lawyer help I guess is also a bigger question?

Justin Lovely: Well right now, we’re looking at… We handle these pharmaceutical cases here in our office, in Myrtle Beach and South Carolina and really some nationwide cases and what we’re looking for, we got a set criteria so far because right now it’s early and we don’t really know what’s going to turn out or it could turn out to be a case. But basically if you’ve used Zantac or Ranitidine in your life, okay, and you’ve developed cancer and it’s stomach cancer or liver cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, anything with internally with the digestive system and you have not had any kind of previous cancers, we’re looking at those cases. Now the one issue you’ve got to… There’s a latency period obviously with cancer. All right, so not everybody has cancer, even if you took Zantac, will necessarily have a case. So generally we need like a qualifying use, so at least six months of Zantac use and then develop that cancer within a year after starting the Zantac or the Ranitidine use and that’s what we’re looking into.

Justin Lovely: So there could be a lot of these cases out there because especially as Zantac has been on the market for 30 years, over 30 years. So these are being grouped. There’s, there’s an MDL it’s going to be formed. We don’t know if it’s going to be placed yet, it could go to New Jersey, could go to California, it might go to Miami. And that’s where everything will be centralized through the MDL process and the litigation will continue still waiting on those orders, still waiting on some studies to come out.

Justin Lovely:  Another thing that we’ve been looking into are childhood cancers with wherever the pregnant mother used Zantac during her pregnancy and then the child later develops cancer. We’re looking into those cases as well. And again, the science is early. That’s what we’re looking into now. And we’d be happy to, to, to work a case up if anybody may seem like they’re afflicted and we can do the investigation and kind of go from there.

Amy Lawrence:  So if you have been taking Zantac, had been diagnosed with cancer, give us a call, we’ll absolutely help you, go through the test with you, investigate all your medical records and everything that’s happened to you, and see if you have the case. So everybody give us a call, 843-839-4111, we’d be happy to help.