Mike Papantonio: The popular acid reflux medication Zantac has been under heavy scrutiny for a lot of years after it was revealed that the drug has been contaminated with a chemical called NDMA and also that the drug was breaking down into dangerous components even beyond that. Joining me to talk about this latest Zantac is, the saga of Zantac, actually, Sara Papantonio is heading up that project, really in many parts of the country. Sara, first of all, give, start from the beginning. What is Zantac? Why should we be concerned about it?

Sara Papantonio: Zantac was introduced into the market in the early 1980s, and they introduced it as this miracle drug that was designed to stop heartburn in its tracks. This was a hugely popular drug because it’s an over counter, the counter drug. And what that means is, you know, when you go to get it, you don’t have to have a prescription. You don’t have to go to a pharmacist, just walk right into a drug store and grab it. And we saw so much success with, with Zantac, it actually became a billion dollar drug.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah.

Sara Papantonio: The first of its kind in that annual sales. So what these manufacturers were seeing were dollar signs in their eyes. They weren’t seeing that this drug was actually poisoning people.

Mike Papantonio: Well, did they, they, they actually, early studies showed if that NDMA was being produced. They knew if I got this right, they knew that NDMA that was, that was being created in Zantac would cause liver disease. It would cause kidney disease. It would cause cancer. It would cause gastrointestinal disease. They knew all that and they kept it quiet from what I can see.

Sara Papantonio: Absolutely. There is absolutely no question of whether or not there was knowledge here. We had scientists in the early 1980s before this drug was even developed saying, there’s a ingredient in this drug Zantac called ranitidine. Ranitidine breaks down when it’s exposed to high heat or temperatures or, or any type of exposure. They said, you need to watch this ingredient because it causes NDMA and that NDMA causes cancer. So there was no question. There were studies released over the 40 year period that Zantac was on the market that this NDMA would cause huge trouble for its consumers.

Mike Papantonio: Well, is it, Sara, there’s also the part of it that’s the most bothersome. A person takes Zantac right. They, they get a load of NDMA. They don’t even know it. Most people don’t even know that the only use for NDMA is to test laboratory rats for cancer. They give the laboratory rats NDMA because it hurries up the process of cancer. Well, the, the public, I don’t think gets the connection between if they put that NDMA in their body and other DMA that comes from food. Talk about that just a little bit.

Sara Papantonio: That’s the absolute truth. This, I mean, just to put this into perspective, this is a chemical that is used in rocket fuel, rocket fuel, and they’re allowing consumers to put this chemical in their body every single day, some over the course of this 40 year period that it’s been sold. Now, NDMA is a carcinogen that is so potent that scientists won’t even do a study, an epidemiological study on human beings, because they’re so confident that NDMA can be linked to cancer.

Mike Papantonio: Okay, you’re doing, you’re handling the discovery. You’re getting ready for trial on this case. What is the most startling things that you’re finding about it? If you were just say, you know, if I’m looking at this across the board, this scares the bejesus out of me?

Sara Papantonio: The fact that it’s so obvious that, that this, this NDMA and this ranitidine molecule, that it could have been identified that this was going to be a problem. It was so obvious and it was so easy for these companies to figure this out, but they just either turned a blind eye or knew, and just chose not to say anything about it.

Mike Papantonio: Sara, are you seeing, I’m seeing some, some studies that talks about how the NDMA actually modifies DNA, that is really scary. It modifies your natural DNA and creates cancer. Is there truth to that? Are the studies there?

Sara Papantonio: So what we’re seeing with NDMA is that it’s causing what we call DNA fragmentation and it’s exactly how you described it. The NDMA is reacting with the cells in your body, and it’s taking a healthy cell and it’s turning it into a cancerous cell and because NDMA is so potent, that cancer is growing at an alarming rate. It’s causing all kinds of cancers. We’re seeing liver cancer, gastric cancers, lung cancers. It’s so alarming, just how potent and you know, and how quick this NDMA reacts to the body.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. In other words, it’s not even a law, it’s not even a latency period to it, sometimes it’s immediate. Look, here’s my advice. Don’t take Zantac. Do away with Zantac. Pepcid, no showing on Pepcid doing the same thing. It’s a good alternative, Pepcid is something I tell when people ask about Zantac, take Pepcid. They got the tablets, chewable tablets and the pills. I hope you go after them hard. I know you will. When will you be in trial?

Sara Papantonio: Hopefully soon. We’ll get them.

Mike Papantonio: Okay. Thank you for joining me, Sara.

Mike Papantonio: Researchers at Valisure discovered that Zantac, the popular heartburn medication, is loaded with a cancer causing substance known as NDMA. They first notified the FDA about this in June of last year, but just in keeping with the FDA, they did nothing about it. The FDA slept on this issue and now it's killing Americans.

Mike Papantonio: Joining me to talk about this is Daniel Nigh. Daniel, let's start at the top. What's the Zantac problem?

Daniel Nigh: Well, Zantac breaks down inside of the body. It's an unstable molecule that breaks down inside of this toxin called NDMA. And NDMA is a radical, terrible toxin. It causes cancer in numerous organs inside of the body. When they are doing animal studies and they want to induce an animal with cancer, the toxin ala choice is often NDMA just because of how quickly it can induce a cancer and it can induce a cancer-

Mike Papantonio: Okay, put it in perspect-

Mike Papantonio: We're not talking about small amounts. As you point out, this is a chemical-

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: That when a scientist wants to make an animal, induce cancer in an animal, this is their go to chemical.

Daniel Nigh: That's right.

Mike Papantonio: Now, there's a number that the, of course I trust nothing that the FDA says, this is the most dysfunctional, it's almost a useless entity. But they say, "Well it's 96 nanograms is going to be okay," but tell me how many nanograms we were talking about with this.

Daniel Nigh: Well, there's multiple different options out there, theories that we're still trying to gather a little bit more information about. The petition from Valisure showed that it may break down into as many as four million nanograms.

Mike Papantonio: Four million.

Daniel Nigh: Right? But that's with heating the sample, there might be some issues recognizably with that. But the other issue is, when it goes inside of the body, and it's combined with nitrates, a high nitrate diet, like if you are eating pizza at the same time as taking your NDMA, they've shown also that under a simulated testing that it may be hundreds of thousands of NDMA breaking down there.

Daniel Nigh: The FDA has even only tested the pill itself and found high nanograms of NDMA in the pill itself.

Mike Papantonio: Okay, okay. Let's back up on all that. Okay. First of all, we can begin here, that we know GlaxoSmithKline, if I'm betting the farm on it, they phonied up results from clinicals. I see it almost every case that I handle-

Daniel Nigh: Well along those lines, Pap, in the 1980s, GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo back then, because keep in mind, Glaxo wrote on the back of Zantac.

Mike Papantonio: That's right.

Daniel Nigh: That's their moneymaker. That's how it became GlaxoSmithKline. They forced the merger because they were within superior position. Without Zantac, I don't know if they'd even be in the name.

Mike Papantonio: Right.

Daniel Nigh: But they knew, back in the 1980s, that combined with the high nitrate diet that it would break down into NDMA-

Mike Papantonio: Let's talk about, okay, so right now we know we're way above the acceptable level of 96 nanograms-

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: We're maybe 3,000, maybe four million.

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: The argument, that we're hearing from the other side is, "Well, oh, that's the only when it's heated up." The point is, we know this, when the Zantac goes into the human body and it combines with nitrates, as you're saying-

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: Nitrate is something you can get from smoked sausage, you can get it from any, look, food is packed with nitrates.

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: Bacon has more than you can count. When you combine bacon with a Zantac pill, those numbers can hit 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, that's what this is showing right now.

Daniel Nigh: Absolutely.

Mike Papantonio: Okay, so that's the first part of it. The second part of it is that the company has known about this for a very long time. And the FDA has known about it for a very long time and done nothing. How long did it take the American FDA to react after this was already pulled off the market around the world?

Daniel Nigh: Well, FDA was the 43rd country to actually take some definitive action.

Mike Papantonio: Okay.

Daniel Nigh: We have countries out there, like Guam and Singapore, taking definitive action before the FDA. They slept on this like they've slept on many other projects as we know.

Mike Papantonio: Tell us why, in this case, the FDA, and they had to save face. That's what I remember about it. They had to say face, tell us that story.

Daniel Nigh: Well, the FDA tested the pill itself so they can see that there are hundreds of nanograms in the pill. And so, once we even have hundreds of nanograms, that's over the threshold level of 96. And the way that it actually started out is even our pharmacies understood what a catastrophic problem this was. They pulled it off the shelves, even the generic medication suppliers, and now Sanofi, they all pulled it off the shelf.

Daniel Nigh: Really, they all acted, in the U.S., well before the FDA took definitive action.

Mike Papantonio: Okay, Sloan Kettering, probably one of the most important cancer research hospitals in the world comes out and says, "We did this study. It scares the bejesus out of us." Tell us about that.

Daniel Nigh: Well, what we know now is that Sloan Kettering, the lead investigator, was interviewed by Bloomberg and they had mentioned that after they saw the study results, they pulled using Zantac in their hospital.

Mike Papantonio: The hospital itself pulled the product out of their hospital and they're the ones that did the study.

Daniel Nigh: That's right. They're the ones that did the study. We have pretty high confidence that there's going to be some significant results in this study.

Mike Papantonio: Surely it's going to be in one of the medical literature. Surely that study is going to be published, so the public can know about that. Tell me-

Daniel Nigh: I think it was supposed to be published in JAMA, and it was supposed to be published a few days ago. And here's one of the big stories. Now, in terms of proving this case, we don't have to have Sloan Kettering study to prove it, but it almost makes it a slam dunk when Sloan Kettering comes out, because it's so clear that if you're taking Zantac, with a study like this, that it increases your risk of cancer.

Mike Papantonio: Just to be clear, Sloan Kettering comes out with a report where they completely substantiate everything that you are alleging.

Daniel Nigh: That's right.

Mike Papantonio: The study shows it. It's very clear. But nevertheless, even though that study, most of the time would be published in the J-A-M-A, or one of the medical pieces of literature, it's not showing up yet.

Daniel Nigh: That's right.

Mike Papantonio: And if I'm guessing, because I've seen this before, I've seen the FDA get involved and hush a story. I've seen the lobby, the pharmaceutical lobby, work together with the FDA to make a story go away. Is that what's happening here in your estimation?

Daniel Nigh: Well, we've seen, on numerous of these science blogs online, that it's already leaked that JAMA pulled the study preemptively. We don't know why. I hope, Pap, I hope that it's just to look at it and see if it's more accurate and just give it a little bit more vetting and make sure that the findings are robust. But we've seen this time and time again, we've seen this in past projects where a company-

Mike Papantonio: Oh, I've seen it a dozen times.

Daniel Nigh: Or the FDA tries to figure out a way to bury a study. And I'm concerned that's what [crosstalk 00:06:51]-

Mike Papantonio: But here, we're talking about a product that causes cancer.

Daniel Nigh: Cancer.

Mike Papantonio: There's no question. I mean anybody that says "No, there's no relationship between NDMA and cancer" is an idiot.

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: Where do you find a scientist that comes out and says, "Yeah, this does, the pill itself generates the chemical NDMA." You understand what I'm saying?

Daniel Nigh: Yeah.

Mike Papantonio: MDMA, it's not contaminated with NDMA. It goes into the body, and synergistically creates the chemical NDMA, which is the chemical that scientists use when they want to promote cancer in a laboratory animal. And this is thousands of times higher than even the FDA's number, which is 96. It's thousands of times higher than that.

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Mike Papantonio: And so, here we are right now, and my supposition here, I'll bet on this all day long and when we do the discovery on this, and take the depositions, what we will show, I promise you will be that lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, and the FDA, worked together to suppress the Sloan Kettering study. I promise you that will happen, not only the Sloan Kettering study, but other studies. Tell me, what is the best support for Zantac and its cause to cancer? What do you rely on?

Daniel Nigh: Well, we know that Zantac breaks down inside into NDMA. Even the FDA has already known that there are some levels that it is breaking down, so that alone, there's a mountain of literature, in terms of animal studies, in terms of human dietary studies, in terms of occupational exposure studies, that show that NDMA causes cancer.

Daniel Nigh: But we also even have a few studies that were done, back in the day, not understanding that NDMA was breaking down inside of the body, but done back in 2008, showing an increased risk of breast cancer for people who were taking Zantac, and also we've seen an increase in the risk of bladder cancer.

Mike Papantonio: Bladder, colon, and stomach, what do people need to be really aware of, if they've been popping, look, there's people that pop Zantac all day long because they have acid reflux, they've got ulcers, they've got, the doctor says, "Yeah, take as many as you want," and they pop them like candy. What should they be conscious of?

Daniel Nigh: Well, I think some of the main cancers that we're going to see is we're going to see bladder cancer, kidney cancer, colorectal cancer, stomach cancer. But I would say this, when we looked back and we found that it even causes an increase in the rate of bladder cancer in terms of Zantac users. We know from our work in Valsartan, where it caused NDMA to break down inside of the body, that breast cancer, you just wouldn't see that in the animal studies, dietary studies, occupational studies as much.

Daniel Nigh: If it causes that and an increased risk, then I think all cancers are on the table, at this point, but NDMA, from Zantac, may cause any type of cancer.

Mike Papantonio: Now I can hear it in trial. GlaxoSmithKline says, "Gee, we voluntarily pulled it off the market." Truth is when should they have known and put this relationship together and not put any more people at risk, as you look at the facts of this case, when should that have been done?

Daniel Nigh: Clearly in the 1980s. They were also warned, internally, that this should, at least, at the very least, it should be marketed with a warning to not take Zantac at the same time as eating, especially with a high nitrite diet, but they did the exact opposite. Their campaign was to show that you could take Zantac at the same time as a high nitrite diet, so that you wouldn't have the heartburn, and you would be able to eat whatever diet you wanted to, clearly against what their own internal [crosstalk 00:10:19-

Mike Papantonio: In about 30 seconds, what are their defenses right now? What are they saying? I mean, obviously, they know this is a multi-billion dollar problem for them. I mean, just the calls that you're getting from people. They are staggering numbers, aren't they?

Daniel Nigh: Very staggering numbers. I mean at this point, we have thousands of clients already, internally. But, if I look at the scope of this problem, Zantac was the most popular pill on the market back in the 1990s, and still popularly prescribed, even as of, 2016 had 15 million users at that time.

Mike Papantonio: 15 million.

Daniel Nigh: This was very, very popular, common drug, and what we think is that they're going to be many people who got cancer as a result of taking Zantac.

Mike Papantonio: And people think it's like taking aspirin. There's no problem here because that's what their doctors think. Because the doctors haven't even been educated, really, about the NDMA relationship.

Daniel Nigh: That's right.

Mike Papantonio: Daniel. Give them hell. This is an ugly, ugly case. Stay in there and fight them.

Daniel Nigh: Absolutely.

Mike Papantonio: Thanks for joining me, okay.

Daniel Nigh: Thank you.

Mike Papantonio: Finally tonight, some good news. A district judge, last week, refused to dismiss several charges against celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti. As he awaits the start of his trial, Avenatti has attempted to get two charges of extortion, and charge for defrauding a client dismissed. These charges are related to the alleged extortion scheme that Avenatti had against Nike. The charges claimed that Avenatti threatened to release damaging information about the company unless they agreed to pay him $20 million. It wasn't even clear where the $20 million was going to go. The judge, in the case, understood that Avenatti has to face the music for his actions, and this case is going to proceed to trial later this month.

Mike Papantonio: In addition to extortion charges against Avenatti, he's also been accused, in separate cases, of stealing millions of dollars from a disabled client, stealing money from a book advance his client received, as well as wire fraud, tax fraud, embezzlement. In total, Avenatti has been hit with 36 different charges. Avenatti represents all of the ugly caricatures of trial lawyers that corporations have been trying to push for years. His greed and arrogance are going to be used as an attack on all lawyers for years to come. But if these charges can just stick, we will at least have one less bad lawyer out there bringing down the reputation of the legal profession. That's all for tonight.

Mike Papantonio: Find us on Twitter and Facebook at facebook.com/RTAmerica'slawyer. You can watch all RT America programs on DirectTV Channel 321, and also stream them live on YouTube. I'm Mike Papantonio, and this is America's Lawyer, where every week we tell you the stories that corporate media is ordered not to tell because their advertisers won't let them. Have a great night.

Farron Cousins: Everyday millions of Americans take medication to reduce or eliminate heartburn. And unfortunately, the past few years have offered up nothing but bad news for some of the most popular heartburn medications out there. Recently, reports began surfacing about Zantac, saying that the medication contains a compound that increases the risk of cancer. Joining me now to talk about this is attorney Daniel Nigh. So Daniel, let's start at the top now. What exactly is Zantac used for? What's the problem that we're seeing?

Daniel Nigh: Well, Zantac is used for acid reflux, but the problem that we're seeing is that Zantac will break down, the molecule, breaks down inside of the body into a very carcinogenic nitrosamine known as NDMA. This is a very toxic carcinogenic that can cause cancer in multiple organs inside of the human body.

Farron Cousins: What kinds of cancer are we looking at here with this compound in there?

Daniel Nigh: Well, there are multiples of them. There might be too many to list here today, but I'll tell you some of them that are probably the most concerning. First, bladder cancer. Very concerning. There are studies out there already that may support a significant increase in the risk of bladder cancer from taking Zantac. Stomach cancer is another one that we're very concerned about because, as you ingest Zantac and it breaks down inside of the stomach, we're seeing that there's potentially hundreds of thousands of NDMA nanograms inside of the stomach. So bladder cancer, stomach cancer. Another one that will we likely think is going to be is kidney cancer, prostate cancer, all of those very problematic if you're ingesting Zantac over a long period of time, regularly.

Farron Cousins: And this is a drug, as I mentioned, millions of people take this.

Daniel Nigh: Absolutely.

Farron Cousins: This is not some obscure prescription drug. This is over the counter. I can walk into a drugstore right now, the ones that still have it.

Daniel Nigh: Yeah.

Farron Cousins: And purchase this thing. But we have seen lots of stores yanking it off the shelves rather quickly here because they understand what's happening. Right?

Daniel Nigh: That's right. There's this company known as Valisure that has filed a petition. They're a pharmacy company that'll test medications to see if there's impurities or carcinogens that are inside of a medication. So they actually seem to, I wouldn't call it discovered this problem, but really started to put attention on this problem with one of the petitions that they filed.

You can look at this petition, you can see the evidence that they've combined from multiple past journal articles, combined with their own lab testing that they've done on the medication, and you can see it's a substantial problem. That's why we think that people like CVS and Walgreens have immediately pulled this off the shelves because there's almost no doubt, when you look at the data that's out there, that this is a substantial health crisis. And that if you're taking Zantac today, I'd recommend that you go have a conversation about your doctor with it immediately.

Farron Cousins: Well, and one of the things we saw originally was the FDA came out and said, oh, well there's low levels in this. This may have been a few months ago. But then they came back said, oh, we were wrong about the low levels, it's actually pretty significant. That, in and of itself, is a pretty significant announcement from the FDA that typically isn't always that great on these drug recalls.

Daniel Nigh: Well, the FDA hasn't been that great so far in really explaining what the issue is, and I think it's really important that the public understands this. There are multiple other countries out there that have taken much stronger action from their regulatory authorities because it seems like they've understand what the issue is. The FDA, early on, was taking a look at this and they were testing just that the pill itself and they were seeing, is there any NDMA in it? And they were seeing low levels. That's not what the problem is. This is not a manufacturing contamination where NDMA is in the pill.

The problem is the molecule breaks down inside of the body when it's combined with nitrates in the stomach. So if you eat pizza and you have a Zantac, which is one of the ways that it was advertised, you're going to see hundreds of thousands of nanograms breaking apart in the stomach when that occurs. Or, our own DDH enzyme in our kidney, or other organs, may also be shearing off millions of nanograms of NDMA. It's the way that the molecule breaks down inside of the body. It's not whether or not there's NDMA in the pill before it even breaks down. That's the problem.

Farron Cousins: So we're not looking at, say, something like Valsartan. Valsartan is a drug that had become, I believe, contaminated with NDMA during the manufacturing process. That obviously caused a lot of problems. You've worked extensively on that.

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Farron Cousins: This is one where almost, because of what's in the pill and because of what's in the body, we've got chemical reactions taking place-

Daniel Nigh: That's right.

Farron Cousins: that weren't necessarily, I guess, foreseen by the company. It's not something you can, as you said, find in the pill, but we've got to take better looks at what happens once you ingest this. It's not just what's in it, but there's chemicals in your body. There's very real chemicals in these drugs.

Daniel Nigh: That's right.

Farron Cousins: And chemicals react with one another. That's freshman year science there. We know this.

Daniel Nigh: That's right. And a couple things like, I'm not so sure if the company who first developed this, GSK, had no idea of this problem. We see, once we get into internal documents in litigation-

Farron Cousins: Right.

Daniel Nigh: you know we discover issues all the time about how they were hiding science. Some of the signals that I've seen in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if they were trying to bury science in this case.

But, the other parts of it are, yes, it breaks down into potentially millions of nanograms inside of the human body. It's not like Valsartan, where the contamination happened at a manufacturing facility. This is the molecule itself is designed in such a way that it breaks down inside of the body, and it's been doing this since Zantac was on the market, 30 years ago. Over 30 years ago.

Farron Cousins: See, that's very interesting. This is not just something, oh, all of a sudden-

Daniel Nigh: Right.

Farron Cousins: Zantac is a problem. No, it's Zantac's always been a problem, we're just now recognizing what the problem is and how the science has evolved.

Daniel Nigh: That's right. People have been regularly taking Zantac. They may have been taking it for 30 years. They've been having, probably over those 30 years, it's been breaking down into hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of nanograms of NDMA inside of their body. That puts them at a very substantial increased risk of getting cancer because of that NDMA.

Farron Cousins: We've seen other proton pump inhibitors, Prilosec, Nexium, they've got their own problems with kidney issues, kidney failure. This Zantac, this is a totally separate issue. Because I know a lot of people when they look up heartburn medication lawsuit, they need to understand these are two separate problems, correct?

Daniel Nigh: Completely. Now, I would tell you, the PPI, that's a problem. But the cancer coming from Zantac, especially for people who are regular users for over 30 years, that's a health crisis.

Farron Cousins: One of the things that we need to know, if somebody's taking this medication, if somebody watching this, and I assume, given the number of people who take this, somebody watching this has taken a Zantac in the last 24 hours. What do they do? What do they need to do? Who do they go talk to? What's happening?

Daniel Nigh: Well, this cancer is not something you're going to get from one time that you take the pill.

Farron Cousins: Right.

Daniel Nigh: Okay. This is something that's happening over a long period of time. The viewers who are looking at this and they're worried that they took something in the last 24 hours, you're not going to be able to get rid of the NDMA that's being broken down inside of your body. That one time you took the pill in the last 24 hours, that's not the worry. The concern is, you've been taking this over, regularly, over a long period of time, might even only be as much as over a year of time, to be able to develop this cancer. You need to have a conversation with your doctor about this problem and speak with your doctor about potentially switching to some other type of medication, or some other way to treat your heartburn.

Farron Cousins: But, probably a conversation that they need to have sooner rather than later, right? Because this...

Daniel Nigh: Absolutely.

Farron Cousins: Is there any bioaccumulation here? Does the MDA, NDMA, excuse me, does it get flushed out? I know it still causes the damage, but does it build up over time and stay there or does it cause the damage and head?

Daniel Nigh: It has a pretty short half life. So in terms of the bioaccumulation, at these levels, I don't know that we're certain about what occurs. Now, what we do know is that when they measured the amount of NDMA inside of people's urine that we're taking Zantac, compared to those who were not taking Zantac, the Zantac users had over 400 times the amount of NDMA in their urine. So we know a lot of it flushes out, but we also know that if that much is flushing out, then there's a lot of it that's being absorbed inside of the organs before it gets outside of the body, like the bladder, the kidney, the stomach, those things that talked about earlier.

Farron Cousins: Right. And so, one last question. Because we're dealing with science, and the different foods you eat have different chemicals in them, does the diet also change how much NDMA may be in a person? I'm not asking for a specific list of bad foods, but, would we see a difference in somebody who may be has one diet versus another, both on Zantac?

Daniel Nigh: You may. People who have a lot of nitrites, like if they're eating pizza at the same time that they're taking an NDMA, they're going to... we can see that they're going to likely have hundreds of thousands of nanograms that are being broken down because of that. Somebody who happens to have a diet with virtually no nitrites, probably may not be seeing the breakdown there. But they still might be seeing the breakdown because of their DDH in their kidney. The enzymes there can also break it down, so I don't think they're in the clear, that's still something that we're very concerned about.

Now, in terms of just people, normal diets. I mean, if you have a lot of bacon in your diet, that's something that's been shown to increase your risk for cancer, just alone, without Zantac. What I will tell you though is, the amount of NDMA in Zantac is thousands of times higher than any bacon.

Farron Cousins: Wow. Daniel Nigh, thank you so much for telling us this story. I know this science is very complicated, so thank you for helping break it down so that we can understand it.

Daniel Nigh: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Brigida Santos: Hi, I’m here with Daniel Nigh, he is an attorney with Levin Papantonio and he is handling the Valsartan national litigation and basically this is the case against Zantac. So walk me through this case. Why is this drug being recalled?

Daniel Nigh: Well, we got tipped off from one of our experts about this problem about three months ago and what, what we’re finding is it’s the same type of contaminant that we had with Valsartan, but at potentially much higher levels for a much longer period of time. So what happens is this molecule, Zantac breaks down inside of the body and sheers off what’s called NDMA, which is a very genotoxic carcinogen that causes cancer large amounts of volume, at large volumes. Sheers off large amounts of NDMA into the body, both in the stomach and in the kidney and it causes cancer in numerous sites.

When they want to test animals to see, induce them with the cancer and they want to study that cancer inside of the animal, NDMA is the toxin of choice to induce that cancer. You will get a tumor 100% of the time, whichever organ you induce that NDMA. So this is a, this is a catastrophic problem and it’s coming to light now. The pharmacies have now realized it. They’re pulling it off the market. We’ve now seen that Sanofi has recalled all the over the counter medication. I’m not sure you can purchase Zantac today in the US.

Brigida Santos: But people have purchased it and people have taken it over the counter and they’ve oftentimes taken it for a long time. What should people do who have been exposed to this?

Daniel Nigh: Well, there’s a lot of problems. If you’ve been exposed to it and you’ve got a cancer after being exposed to it, I really think you should seek legal help immediately. If you don’t have a cancer yet, you need to be following up with your doctor, letting them know that you took the Zantac and you were exposed to this carcinogen. The Dr. may not, may not realize the problem today, but he’ll, you know, in time we’re going to see more and more of this information’s going to come out and it’s going to show that it’s a carcinogen. So the other thing, if you have an unexplained pain over a long period of time, get it checked out because that could be your first sign of a cancer.

I represent a lot of clients, unfortunately they checked out that unexplained pain too late and that was the difference between them, you know, surviving the cancer versus not. And so getting those regular testing, if you’re over 50 years old, get a colonoscopy. A lot of times that’s how you find your, find your, your colon cancer. Your at an increased risk of cancer if you took Zantac over a long period of time, there’s no doubt about it. With these levels that are in this NDMA absolutely increased risk of cancer.

Brigida Santos: What about the other generic versions of this, Ranitidine, are they finding the same problem? Have those products been pulled from the market as well?

Daniel Nigh: They’re all the same molecule. So Ranitidine is Zantac but generic, it’s in its generic form. It doesn’t have the name brand on it. It’s the same molecule. It’s been breaking down as NDMA for the last 35 years that has been on the product. Both name brand Zantac, but also generic brand Ranitidine.

Brigida Santos: Has Sanofi the manufacturer, the French manufacturer, were they aware of this at any point until now?

Daniel Nigh: Hard to tell. I mean the first one that developed it was GSK, GlaxoSmithKline and they were selling it for a long period of time. I would be suspicious and I would think that they would be the ones most likely to know at least early on, hard to know who would know after that. Pfizer had it for some period of time. Boehringer Ingelheim had it for some period of time and then it transferred over to Sanofi as the name brand, over the counter medication. So any one of those four may have had some significant knowledge and it’s not like there’s hasn’t been any information about this. There have been signals in the journal articles about this problem for some time.

Brigida Santos: Wow. So what can people do now moving forward? If they have heartburn, they don’t take this medication obviously. Are there other brands of different drugs that also are showing problems that treat heartburn?

Daniel Nigh: What that’s the problem. PPI, which is omeprazole, has, has a similar problem.

Brigida Santos: I take that all the time.

Daniel Nigh: So that’s another one that, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t cause cancer at these incidents rise. It doesn’t have this carcinogen. I mean, I would probably say if I were ran it, Zantac’s worse than, than PPI. But, you know, tried and true is, is probably just your good old fashioned Tums, you know, compared to if you’re looking at side effects and trying to minimize side effects. You know, Tums has a couple things that talk about side effects. For the most part, it’s more safe than those, than those other drugs.

Brigida Santos: And so far, how many people have you spoken to that have been affected by this?

Daniel Nigh: Well, I represent now over 500 clients who have been, who have gotten cancer after being contaminated with this NDMA medication. So, you know, there’s a large number of people this is gonna affect. Don’t think that you have to have been diagnosed through cancer in the last year or two years, no. You could have been diagnosed in, in 2010, you know, you, you could have been diagnosed in 2005. I mean, there’s a large range, you know, you do need a, you know, take it for some period of time, you know, before you get diagnosed with the cancer. But that’s something you should, you should speak to an attorney about.

Brigida Santos: Can you share any stories of what kinds of people these are? Because it’s very easy to forget the faces of the people who are affected by this. It’s not that you’re just going after a corporation, you’re, you’re going on behalf of the victims of this.

Daniel Nigh: Absolutely. And it’s there, there are a lot of sad stories. You know, it can be people that are, that are elderly. We could be talking about people who are new parents, you know, people that are in college. I mean I, I’ve seen the whole spectrum, but even, even more than that, I represent a patient who was taking this as an infant because it’s prescribed for infants who have acid reflux and was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of four. And when you look at the, the pattern, the amount this, this infant was taking, it’s highly explanatory that the Zantac may have been responsible for that leukemia diagnosis.

Brigida Santos: Wow.

Daniel Nigh: So that happens. Also pregnant women, it was indicated for pregnant women to take and one of the issues that we’re looking at is that it does appear that NDMA crosses the placental barrier and very well could the child cancer as a result of it. So there’s a wide range of people. Unfortunately, I don’t think any, any person’s safe that is taking Zantac from this issue.

Brigida Santos: Daniel Nigh, thank you so much. Thanks for your time.