A jury in the US state of Missouri has ordered
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to pay $72m (£51m) to the family of a woman who
claimed her death was linked to use of the company's Baby Powder talc.
Jackie Fox from Birmingham, Alabama died of ovarian
cancer last year, aged 62, having used the talc for decades.
Her family argued that the firm knew of talc risks
and failed to warn users.
J&J denied the claim and is said to be
considering an appeal. Researchers say links with ovarian cancer are unproven.
A company spokeswoman said: "We have no higher
responsibility than the health and safety of consumers, and we are disappointed
with the outcome of the trial.
"We sympathise with the plaintiff's family but
firmly believe the safety of cosmetic talc is supported by decades of
scientific evidence."
Other cases pending
The verdict at the end of the three-week trial was
the first time damages have been awarded by a US jury over talc claims.
More than 1,000 similar cases are pending nationwide
and lawyers said thousands more could now be filed.
The jury in Ms Fox's case deliberated for five hours
before finding Johnson & Johnson liable for fraud, negligence and
conspiracy.
The award constituted $10m in damages and $62m in
punitive damages.
"This case clearly was a bellwether and clearly
the jury has seen the evidence and found it compelling," said Stanford
University law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom. "The jury was distressed
by the company's conduct."
However, she said the size of the award was unlikely
to survive.
"Big jury verdicts do tend to be reined in
during the course of the appellate process and I expect that to be the case
here," she said.
'Small risk'
Cancer Research UK says evidence for a link between
talc use and ovarian cancer is "still uncertain".
"Even if there is a risk it is likely to be
fairly small," the charity says.
Ovarian cancer charity Ovacome says causes of the
disease are still unknown but are likely to be "a combination of many
different inherited and environmental factors, rather than one cause such as
talc".
It says that in 2003, results of 16 studies involving
12,000 women showed that using talc increased the risk of ovarian cancer by
around a third, and that a 2013 review of US studies involving 18,000 women had
similar results for genital, but not general, talcum powder use.
However, it warns that studies of this type
"can suffer from bias" and there were "uncertainties"
around the results.
"A large well-designed American study in 2000
involving nearly 80,000 women found no link between using talc and the risk of
ovarian cancer," it says.
The charity says that even if using talc does raise
the ovarian cancer risk by a third, "to put it into context, smoking and
drinking increases the risk of oesophageal cancer by 30 times".
"Ovarian cancer is a rare disease, and
increasing a small risk by a third still gives a small risk."
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