Did Xarelto, the Drug Arnold Palmer Promoted, Lead to His Death?

Originally published on Mass Tort Nexus

One of the final images of beloved golfer Arnold Palmer is the 87-year old in a TV commercial wearing a pink sweater and saying, “Treatment with Xarelto was the right move for us.” Many people are wondering if that is true in the wake of his death on September 25, 2016, which was preceded in August 2016 by surgery for colon bleeding, according to Golf Digest.

Xarelto is the target of 10,769 federal and state lawsuits that charge, among other things, that the blood-thinning drug causes death from gastrointestinal and other internal bleeding. Furthermore, Palmer was hospitalized on Sept. 22 in preparation for heart surgery on Sept. 26 at Pittsburgh Medical Center. However, his condition steadily weakened and he died “due to complications from heart disease.”

Despite ongoing federal and state litigation, defendants Bayer HealthCare AG and Janssen Pharmaceuticals have broadcast a TV commercial for more than a year, where Palmer and other celebrities tout the dangerous drug.

Just 25 months ago Palmer underwent surgery to have a pacemaker implanted, according to Golf Digest. That procedure marked the first of a series of health issues including high blood pressure, for which he took pills daily. Palmer said in a 2015 interview that he was taking “a blood thinner,” which he attributed to a bout with deep vein thrombosis (blood clots). Deep vein thrombosis is also linked with coronary heart disease. Therefore, had he been taking Coumadin he would not have needed surgery to stop the colon bleeding.

Defendants in the federal MDL, before US District Judge Eldon E. Fallon, In RE: Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) Products Liability Litigation, include Bayer Healthcare, the designer and manufacturer of Xarelto. Janssen Pharmaceuticals (a Division of Johnson & Johnson) currently sells Xarelto in the United States pursuant to a licensing agreement with Bayer. Consequently, plaintiffs involved in the MDL have suffered various harmful side effects, including:

• Gastrointestinal Bleeding,
• Intracranial Hemorrhage,
• Hemorrhagic and Other Severe Internal Bleeding,
• Stroke,
• Death (due to one of the aforementioned injuries).

A complete set of federal MDL forms can be found online on the Mass Tort Nexus app.