As noted above by Nick, all medications have side effects. Side effects are different than allergies. Allergies are when your body acts as if the medicine is an infection, and attacks your own cells. Depending on which kind of immune reaction occurs, you can have puffiness, hives, redness, difficulty breathing, etc.. In most cases, these respond well to epinephrine and benadryl and prednisone. In very rare cases, the immune system freaks out and makes a person’s skin fall off like a severe burn (this is what happens with Stevens Johnson).

In fact, most medications have the possibility of very rare but potentially fatal reactions such as Stevens Johnson. This can happens more commonly with some medications than others (although still very rare). Anti-seizure medicines are well-known for causing this reaction, but it is still very rare.

The question that is the basis of the lawsuit is not whether or not this can happen (the answer is always yes), but rather whether the drug company misinformed the FDA about the actual incidence in order to get over the counter approval. Was the incidence high enough to actually warrant labeling on the package? What level of risk is necessary to require labeling? Obviously the more serious the side effect, the more we want to know about it even if it is rare. But it is not necessarily a drug company’s responsibility to list every single rare event that can happen when someone takes a medicine; nor should this kind of rare event make people reluctant to take medicine that is needed for an illness when the benefits outweigh the risks and there are not better alternatives. (Is the risk of Stevens Johnson lower for acetaminophen? If so, this may be equally effective with lower risk.) The article does not specify what the actual risk versus what the risk the drug company claimed, or how these numbers were reached, or whether the child was on any other medication that is more likely to have caused her rash, etc.

However, people fail to remember: A DRUG WITHOUT SIDE EFFECTS IS A DRUG WITHOUT EFFECTS. Whenever you take any drug you risk serious injury or even death.

Fortunately, that risk with most medicines is miniscule. Of course even if there is a tiny risk, if enough people use the medicine, someone (in this case Johnson) is going to have a bad reaction.

What they don’t comment on is the children with febrile seizures who would be injured without the drug. Or the kids with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis who are helped by NSAIDS. If more people are helped than harmed, the drug does good. Unfortunately in our society, the single individual who has a vanishingly rare adverse reaction can sue everyone involved and threaten the availability of the medicine to people who need it.

Though the fact that your kid is more likely to die riding in the car to the drug store to get the motrin… that escapes most people. Remember, if the risks outweigh the benefits its a good thing.