On Friday, Walgreen Co. was ordered by a jury to pay $25.8 million to the family of a cancer patient given a medication that caused a stroke and then several years later, death.

Beth Hippely was prescribed Warfarin, a blood thinner, in 2002 while being treated for breast cancer. According to court documents, the prescription she received at a Walgreen's pharmacy was 10 times what it should have been. The overdose caused a cerebral hemorrhage which led to permanent bodily injury, disability, pain, and then death. Hippely, a mother of three, died at the age of 46. Apparently, the error occurred when a 19-year-old pharmacy technician misfiled the prescription.

Hippely's family has been seeking justice for five years.

The skin cancer we so desperately try to avoid may be caused, in part, by the very thing we use to prevent the disease -- sunscreen.

Scientists at the University of California report in the journal Free Radical Biology & Medicine that some of the chemicals found in sunscreen products can become cancer-causing agents once they are absorbed into the skin.
And perhaps this is why more and more people are developing skin cancer, despite the increasing use of sun lotions.

"Sunscreens may be doing more harm than good," says lead researcher Dr. Kerry Hanson.

May is the important word here. Sunscreens may contribute in some way to the incidence of skin cancer. But the jury is still out. And experts are not sure right now how significant this research will be in the long run.

Wyeth officials say their hormone replacement therapy Prempro is not the cause of one Ohio woman's breast cancer. But two jury decisions prove otherwise.

The first jury, in October, awarded Jennie Nelson and her husband $1.5 million in compensatory damages, validating Nelson's claim that her breast cancer -- resulting in a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation -- was caused by the Prempro she took for six years. When this verdict was thrown out due to a mistrial, a retrial began.

The retrial concluded yesterday -- with a Philadelphia jury awarding the Nelsons this time with $3 million.

"Both times this case has been heard on terms established by Wyeth and still the juries have clearly found that Prempro causes breast cancer," says Nelson's attorney Tobias Millrood, adding that Wyeth puts sales ahead of patient safety.

Wyeth respectfully disagrees and argues that it acted responsibly in the promotion of its hormone replacement products and in disclosing with doctors and patients all therapy-associated health risks.

Millions of women have used Wyeth's hormone replacement therapies to control the effects of menopause, and the company, sanctioned in January to pay $1 million to an Arkansas breast cancer survivor, now faces more than 5,000 lawsuits of this same nature.

Despite a large-scale study revealing drugs like Prempro increase the risk of breast cancer if used for five years or more, the drug still remains on the market. And Wyeth is so sure their drug is not at fault for causing Nelson's breast cancer that they plan to appeal yesterday's verdict.