Before Rodney Briones’s physicians at Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center in California treated him with remdesivir, they didn’t disclose the risks to him or to his wife, Christina, and didn’t obtain informed consent, according to a complaint filed by the Briones family.
The couple had gone to the managed care consortium for help in 2021 after Briones developed COVID-19 symptoms and tested positive twice for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease.
A five-day course of treatment with the controversial antiviral drug and other allegedly contraindicated, high-risk medications allegedly led to kidney failure for the 50-year-old Briones, who was subsequently placed on a ventilator. During this time, Kaiser Riverside reportedly refused to allow the man’s wife or family to see him. He died on Sept. 12, 2021.
“My husband was murdered because of government [expletive],” Christina Briones told The Epoch Times. “I never thought this could happen.”
Kaiser Permanente and Gilead Sciences, the maker of remdesivir, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Christina Briones sued Kaiser in Riverside Superior Court, alleging the wrongful death of her husband because of a hospital protocol that included administering remdesvir, which, according to the lawsuit, is a failed Ebola drug that was found to be terminally toxic to the kidneys. The drug was pulled from an Ebola study because more than 53 percent of remdesivir recipients died, the lawsuit states.
“The Kaiser Riverside physician did not disclose the availability of highly effective Safe Multi-Drug Early Treatment (SMDET) to Rodney when both Rodney and a reasonable patient in Rodney’s position would have wanted the disclosure,” Matthew Tyson, the Briones’s family attorney, wrote in the complaint. “This was constructive fraud.”
The Briones family seeks survivor action general damages, as well as wrongful death general and special damages.
“We pioneered remdesivir wrongful death litigation using a constructive fraud theory, and we filed the very first remdesivir wrongful death lawsuit in the country, back in June, for Evangeline Ortega,” said Tyson, who is working with attorney Brian Garrie on multiple remdesivir lawsuits.
In Evangeline Ortega v. Redlands Community Hospital (RCH), Ortega alleges her 65-year-old husband, Armando, was administered remdesivir without being told that RCH would receive a financial bonus.
“The financial bonus to RCH was of personal economic interest to physicians working at RCH’s facility and affected their professional judgment,” Tyson wrote in the June 27 lawsuit filed in San Bernardino Superior Court.
Ortega’s husband suffered kidney failure, multiple organ failure, and eventually died, according to the complaint.
“Armando’s risk of death dramatically changed for the worse by 3,000 percent when physicians and staff of Redlands Community Hospital (RCH) failed to disclose, to Armando or Evangeline, the risks associated with the medically unnecessary and extremely dangerous drug Remdesivir,” the lawsuit states.
