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Pharmacology for lawyers: to take on a pharmaceutical claim, you don't have to be a scientist - but you do have to know science. A grounding in the basics of pharmacology will give your case a shot in the arm.

Article Excerpt
'I don't do math and science; that's why I became a lawyer." How many times have you heard or said that? But in pharmaceutical cases, not knowing science can get you into trouble. An understanding of scientific processes is vital to establishing causation, liability, and damages, and it is necessary for successful discovery, expert witness preparation, and Daubert (1) (or Frye (2)) motions.

Rest assured, the other side will know the science--cold. Pharmaceutical manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a single product and seeing it through the approval process. If a drug is challenged in court, the company's lawyers will be completely comfortable with the scientific issues involved. You should be, too.

Pharmacology--the study of pharmaceuticals and their effects--is the fundamental science of drug development? Have you ever wondered how aspirin makes your headaches go away? How does it know where the ache is located? How does it stop the pain when it gets there? These are the questions pharmacology asks and answers.

The field of pharmacology has two branches: pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Pharmacokinetics examines what your body does to a drug, including how a drug gets where it needs to go and how your body gets rid of it. Pharmacodynamics studies the drug's effect on your body: for example, how a pill works its therapeutic effect. Pharmacokinetics can explain adverse events when drugs interact, while pharmacodynamics can describe adverse events resulting from the body's response to a drug.

How drugs get where they're going

First, a drug has to get into the body. This can happen several ways, although the most common route is orally, in pills, tablets, capsules, and the like. Once a drug reaches your stomach, it must cross the stomach or intestinal wall, then blood vessel walls, and enter the bloodstream to reach the treatment target. Pharmacokinetics considers four areas: absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion or elimination, usually identified by the acronym ADME.

Absorption. The size and chemical properties of a drug molecule determine how easily the body can absorb it. Drugs can pass through a membrane several ways. Some do so by diffusion--typically drugs are fat-soluble because cellular membranes are mostly lipids, that is, fat. Other drugs use transport proteins, present in membranes, to help them across. How readily a drug is absorbed affects how much of it gets into the bloodstream and how much is available to exert a therapeutic (or toxic) effect.

Other factors can affect absorption. One is stomach acidity: Some drugs are not absorbed as well if you...

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