Attorneys who take on the pharmaceutical industry as a voice for consumers injured by medications found an unlikely ally this week, in doctors. Noting that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is often "overwhelmed" by drug safety problems ranging from serious side effects to unsafe manufacturing facilities, editors of the New England Journal of Medicine said patients benefit from information uncovered by attorneys during liability investigations, according to an Associated Press report released Friday.

Pharmaceutical manufacturer Actavis Totowa announced a voluntary recall of more than 65 generic drug products manufactured at its Little Falls, New Jersey, facility. The recall follows an inspection conducted by the Food & Drug Administration earlier this year, which revealed that operations at the New Jersey facility did not meet FDA standards.

In response to a number of recent reports of serious side effects associated with the stop-smoking medication Chantix, Beasley Allen has launched a web site that outlines the problems associated with the drug, manufactured by Pfizer. The web site, www.chantix-legal.com, provides information to help patients identify risks associated with Chantix.

Merck & Co., manufacturer of Vioxx, announced it will make the first payment of $500 million on Aug. 6 into a fund to settle claims by plaintiffs injured by the drug. The settlement fund will eventually total $4.85 billion. By providing the funding for settlements, Merck waives its right to walk away from the settlement deal, originally established in May. More than 60,000 people currently have registered a claim that Vioxx caused heart attack or stroke. Payments to claimants will begin before the end of August.

Pharmaceutical company Merck says it will start cutting checks next month for former users of its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx. Merck announced plans today to fund the $4.8 billion settlement involving about 50,000 lawsuits.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an alert Feb. 1, 2008, to highlight important revisions to the warnings and precautions sections of the full prescribing information for Chantix (generic name varencicline) regarding serious neuropsychiatric symptoms.