Jersey Man Sues Novo Nordisk Over Ozempic

Freehold, NJIn a phrase (likely erroneously) attributed to Josef Stalin, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” But let’s update that and apply it to the situation of many people who, like Edward Fanelli, lost his sight after taking Ozempic. The next chewy thought may have been captured by Dylan Thomas in A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London. He stubbornly refuses to normalize the tragedy in the last line of his poem:

Jersey Man Sues Novo Nordisk Over Ozempic “After the first death, there is no other.”

Acknowledging loss is important. Refusing to normalize it is step two. But people who have been injured by Ozempic can take the third step. They can fight to get some measure of justice by bringing an Ozempic blindness lawsuit.

Edward Fanelli is not “just a statistic.” No one who has suffered from the dangerous side effects of Ozempic is.

Sudden blindness

Fanelli, a 57-year-old New Jersey resident, started taking Ozempic to treat his Type 2 diabetes in October 2022. He reports that he woke up one morning and simply could not see out of his right eye. Nothing – darkness. It never came back.

He could no longer do his job as a general contractor because he couldn’t see out of one eye. “I couldn’t take a chance doing the contracting work, worried about cutting my fingers off,” he said. “If it was on the label, I definitely wouldn’t have taken it. Who would want to risk losing their sight?”

He was diagnosed with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) about eight months after he first experienced symptoms.

NAION

NAION is the result of insufficient blood flow to the optic nerve and causes sudden painless vision loss in one eye at a time. It is like a stroke affecting the eye. Ordinarily it is quite rare, affecting 2-10 people in the United States per year.

Recent studies, including one published in JAMA Ophthalmology, found that the use of semaglutide-containing drugs was associated with a much higher risk of NAION than the population in general. It found that the risk of NAION was more than four times higher for diabetes patients. For those taking semaglutide medications, the risk was more than seven times higher. An additional study, now published in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, raises more concerns about vision loss for patients taking Ozempic and similar drugs.

Symptoms of NAION-related vision loss may include:

loss of vision upon waking;
dark area or shadow in vision;
blurred vision;
color vision loss;
loss of contrast;
light sensitivity;
periocular eye pain; and
headache.

It may affect one eye or both and can result in total blindness. It may be quite sudden.

What it means to lose your sight as an adult

Older adults who lose their vision face challenges that are complicated and compounded by age. Among other things, they may face:

depression and other mental health issues arising from the loss of independence;
loss of income;
family strain because of changing relationships;
lack of accessible transportation;
scarcity of training in adaptive strategies, like white cane travel, the use of service animal, or Braille reading; and
difficulty in learning to use adaptive computer technologies, like magnification software or screen readers.

But suffering and struggling to learn to live with low vision or blindness are not the only things that people who have been injured by Ozempic can do.

Ozempic blindness lawsuits

At the end of June, more than twenty-one New Jersey plaintiffs who, like Edward Fanelli, say they suffered permanent vision loss after taking Ozempic or Wegovy are seeking to consolidate their lawsuits into a multicounty litigation against Novo Nordisk. It is very early in the process for these lawsuits, but hopes are high. Consolidation could streamline and speed them up. Sudden blindness, especially without warning, could be a powerful motivator for a jury. An important issue will certainly be whether Novo Nordisk failed to disclose the risks of which it was aware. Law firms and Ozempic victims throughout the country are taking note.

Not a sad statistic

Some minimize the harm caused by Ozempic as just too great to really get a handle on – an approach that is roughly similar to, “We are all going to die.” Others minimize the harm by pointing out that NAION is just a rare disease.

But talk to Edward Fanelli or Todd Engle. For them, losing their vision is everything. None of us are “just statistics.”