When you’re prescribed a new medication to treat an injury or illness, you hope it will treat your symptoms and help you recover. Getting worse is the last thing on your mind, but that’s a reality for many Americans every year.

Despite rigorous standards and years of testing required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), many dangerous and defective medications make it to pharmacy shelves annually. That’s because drug manufacturers invest billions of dollars in researching, developing, and marketing new medications, and they don’t want to lose that investment due to potential risks that patients may experience.

Drug companies are supposed to report any and all adverse effects when they test their medications, but they may hide some results to improve the chances of their medications getting green-lit by the FDA. In other cases, drug companies may fail to thoroughly test their new medications, causing serious side effects and complications to go undiscovered until the drugs are released and patients begin taking them.

Manufacturing defects can also result in serious injuries or illnesses, even when medications are properly and safely designed. For example, several batches of blood pressure medications were recently recalled due to contamination with a substance that’s linked to cancer.

In many cases, defective and dangerous medications can be linked back to one thing: valuing profits over patient safety. And at Ferrer Poirot Feller Daniel, we believe that drug companies should be held liable when their skewed priorities result in harm or even death to innocent victims. If you or someone you love was injured by a medication, call our drug injury lawyers today for a free consultation.