Guidant Withholds Info About the Dangers of its Defibrillators

In documents filed in a Texas lawsuit against Guidant, the manufacturer of implantable defibrillators, the company failed to disclose publicly that Guidant officials had projected that some patients might die because of short circuits in their implantable defibrillator.  According to the documents, Guidant did not disclose the information because the overall failure rate was not worthy of public disclosure.  One might ask, “How many deaths warrant a ‘high enough failure rate'”?