PEDIATRICS Vol. 95 No. 3 March 1995, pp. 388
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JUNK SCIENCE JUNKED

J. F. L. MD

It took a decade, but in a California courtroom this month science finally beat the plaintiffs' lawyers. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the notorious Bendectin case.

This was the lawsuit brought by the parents of two children who said their sons' birth defects were caused by the anti-morning sickness drug that the mothers took during their pregnancies. The dismissal is a giant step toward returning sanity to our out-of-control tort liability system.

In a unanimous opinion filed on January 4, a three-judge panel ruled that the science offered up by the plaintiffs' experts was inadequate. The court pointed out that none of their findings had been published in scientific journals or offered up for peer review.

The court didn't mince words. "Bendectin litigation has been pending in the courts for over a decade," Judge Alex Kozinski's scathing opinion reads, "yet the only review the plaintiffs' experts' work has received has been by judges and juries, and the only place their theories and studies have been published is in the pages of federal and state reporters."

Or as we would put it, the aim of this case wasn't a search for truth and justice but a search for deep pockets.