PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A record jury verdict of $57 million against Johnson and Johnson was awarded to a Pennsylvania woman who was injured by a product that thousands of women have. 
 
 “It was a very happy day, but I was still sad and depressed,” said Ella Ebaugh. “I’m in excruciating pain when I’m standing, it hurts when I’m sitting.” 
 
 Ebaugh, 51, was in too much pain to enjoy her daughter Jamie’s wedding. 
 
 “It makes her upset but I still love her, she’s still a wonderful mother,” said Jamie Dang. 
 
 She’d been active on a softball team, busy with her family and like millions of women, Ella suffered from stress urinary incontinence. 
 
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 “I had five children and that’s what weakened my pelvic floor muscles,” Ella tells CBS3’s Stephanie Stahl. 
 
 For women like Ella, who need surgery, pelvic mesh is often used to reinforce tissue around the urethra. 
 
 “My urethra is mangled and I will suffer for the rest of my life,” she said. 
 
 The mesh used in Ella’s surgery was made by Johnson and Johnson’s Ethicon unit. It eroded into Ella’s urethra. Three revision surgeries later some of the mesh remains embedded. 
 
 “I feel like I’m on fire you know down there,” said Ella. 
 
 Ella is among an estimated hundreds of thousands of women who have mesh made by Ethicon. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed nationwide. 
 
 Lawyer Kila Baldwin, with the Kline & Specter Law Firm in Philadelphia, is representing Ella and a thousand other women in Philadelphia lawsuits against Johnson and Johnson. 
 
 “The company was reckless and the company totally ignored the real serious risk of permanently injuring women,” said Baldwin. 
 
 A Philadelphia jury awarded Ella $57.1 million finding that Ethicon was guilty of negligence and its product was defectively designed. 
 
 Ethicon is expected to appeal the case. 
 
 “Ethicon is confident in the positive impact our pelvic mesh products have had. The use of mesh to treat stress urinary incontinence is supported by medical experts, medical societies, physicians and regulatory organizations around the world,” said the company in a statement. 
 
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 “That flies in the face of the evidence that was put in front of the jury in this case,” said Baldwin. 
 
 The FDA has received thousands of complaints about pelvic mesh made by a number of different companies and used for several gemological problems. 
 
 Ella’s family worries about others struggling, like they do, as they try to move forward. 
 
 Major medical groups say there are potential complications with any surgical procedure, but that pelvic mesh is safe and helpful for the majority of patients who have it. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| A vaginal mesh implant made by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was launched without a clinical trial, and then marketed for five years after the company learned that it had a higher failure rate than their two earlier devices. 
 
 Internal company emails disclosed in a US court case, in which a 51-year-old woman was awarded a record $57m in damages this month, also show that senior executives even briefly considered suppressing unfavourable data that “could compromise the future” of the device. 
 
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 J&J’s Ethicon unit was found by a US court to be liable for the serious injuries Ella Ebaugh suffered after receiving a mesh implant to treat urinary incontinence. The mother of five said she was left with a mangled urethra, bladder spasms and continual pelvic pain after an unsuccessful procedure that led to three revision surgeries to remove mesh that had cut into her urethra and migrated to her bladder. 
 
 But documents submitted to the court show J&J staff had raised concerns about the “spinning of data” in emails and male executives are seen bantering about a suggestion that sex with an earlier patient with mesh complications must be “like screwing a wire brush”. 
 
 Ella Ebaugh, who was awarded $57m after a court ruled that Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon unit were liable for the serious injuries she suffered. Photograph: CBS 
 
 When it emerged from initial data that the success rates for a new device looked to be “way below” those seen for previous products, Ethicon’s director of sales, Xavier Buchon, suggested in an email “stop[ping] for a while such publications that could compromise the future”. 
 
 The J&J implant, used to treat urinary incontinence, was launched in 2006. Despite the early indications of a high failure rate, it was only withdrawn in 2012 after being used in thousands of operations in the US, the UK and Australia. The documents raise uncomfortable questions for the manufacturers of vaginal mesh products, which are the subject of growing controversy. 
 
 The implants, which reinforce tissue around the urethra, are widely used to treat incontinence, and for the majority of women the procedure is quick and successful. However, some women have suffered debilitating complications, including severe pelvic pain, the mesh eroding through the vaginal wall or perforating organs. 
 
 Class action law suits are underway in Australia and the US, where lawyers claim that patients have been exposed to unacceptable risks; in England, NHS data suggests as many as one in fifteen women later requires full or partial removal of the implant. 
 
 
 
 Ebaugh, whose case was heard in Philadelphia, said that her complications have left her with constant pelvic pain, meaning for example, that although she attended her daughter’s recent wedding, she was unable to enjoy it. “I feel like I’m on fire down there,” she said in an interview with CBS. 
 
 The tranche of documents, revealed during the trial, places a spotlight on tensions between Ethicon’s commercial and clinical divisions at the time it launched its “miniature” mesh product, called the TVT-Secur, in 2006. 
 
 The company hoped that the new device, which was smaller and required fewer incisions, would reduce complications seen with its earlier devices. But getting to market ahead competitors, who had similar offerings in the pipeline, was described as “priceless” in company documents. It was approved for use without a trial under US and European equivalence rules, which allow this when a new device is similar to existing ones. 
 
 Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford who has called for a public inquiry into the use of mesh, condemned the decision to launch a device before a trial, saying this had “led to direct patient harms”. “It has made it impossible to provide informed choice to women, and points to a regulatory system that is failing patients,” he added. 
 
 Prof Bernard Jacquetin, an eminent French gynaecologist whose early study on TVT-Secur had led to misgivings among J&J management, told the Guardian the company had acted “irresponsibly” by launching the device without adaquate evidence. 
 
 Ahead of the device’s original launch, Jacquetin was invited to the US to give advice on the new design, but was taken aback when he was presented with a boxed-up product ready for release. Jacquetin and colleagues later carried out a study in 40 patients, which found success rates of 77% two months after surgery, compared to the roughly 85-90% success rate commonly reported for Ethicon’s original TVT mesh device. 
 
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 On learning that Jacquetin’s results did not look promising (though not referring to the eventual 77% figure), marketing manager, Fabrice Degeneve emailed his superiors to ask: “How should we handle this without compromising the use of this new technique?” 
 
 Ethicon’s director of sales, Xavier Buchon, replied: “This is for sure a big concern,” before suggesting withholding results while the company reviewed the patients to be included in the analysis. “No way to hide the truth but to make sure it has been done correctly in terms of procedure and inclusion,” he added. 
 
 In the event, the findings were presented at a major international conference and Jacquetin said he never felt pressure to bury unfavourable results. But he adds: “I was really disappointed. I told many people at Ethicon it was not [a good device].” 
 
 In 2012, TVT-Secur was withdrawn from the market, along with three other mesh products. J&J declined to provide exact figures on how many women had received the implants. 
 
 In other emails, J&J staff complain of colleagues “constantly spinning data” and of a dangerous blurring of the “lines between commercial and research” divisions. “I am continually amazed and surprised at our need to push back,” wrote Judi Gauld, Ethicon’s former clinical director in Scotland. 
 
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 Other emails show a blasé attitude to distressing complications. In one, dated from 2003, a surgeon sought advice on treating a patient with a 2cm stretch of mesh poking through her vaginal wall. “Sex is like screwing a wire brush according to her spouse,” the doctor wrote. Martin Weisberg, Ethicon’s medical director, replied: “I’ve never tried the wire brush thing so I won’t comment.” 
 
 
 
 Following the trial, Ebaugh’s lawyer, Kila Baldwin, said in a statement: “I am pleased the jury recognised the recklessness of J&J and I hope the company takes notice of the verdict and adjusts its practices accordingly.” 
 
 Johnson & Johnson said they plan to appeal the verdict. In a statement, the company said: “We believe the evidence in the Ebaugh trial showed Ethicon’s TVT and TVT-Secur devices were properly designed, Ethicon acted appropriately and responsibly in the research, development and marketing of the products, and the products were not the cause of the plaintiff’s continuing medical problems. 
 
 “Over two and a half million documents have been provided to plaintiff attorneys by Ethicon as part of the pelvic mesh litigation in the United States, and selective disclosure of certain sentences or documents without proper context can be extremely misleading.”
– Johnson & Johnson must pay a Pennsylvania woman $57 million after internal emails revealed in court it launched a new vaginal mesh implant without a clinical trial, continued to push the implant for five years despite knowing its success rate was "way below" earlier versions, and tried to quash data that "could compromise the future" of the implant, the Guardian reports. “I’m in excruciating pain when I’m standing, it hurts when I’m sitting," Ella Ebaugh tells CBS Philadelphia. The 51-year-old had J&J's vaginal mesh device implanted to treat urinary incontinence. It cut into her urethra and entered her bladder, and she's so far had three surgeries to remove it. Some mesh is still stuck in her urethra. “My urethra is mangled and I will suffer for the rest of my life,” Ebaugh says. On Thursday, a jury awarded Ebaugh $57 million, finding J&J unit Ethicon was guilty of negligence and making a defective product. The Philadelphia Inquirer notes it was the fifth and largest verdict awarded in a vaginal mesh lawsuit. Internal J&J emails revealed employee concerns about the "spinning of data" and executives making light of a doctor's comments that having sex with a patient suffering vaginal mesh complications was "like screwing a wire brush." Documents show Ethicon was hurrying to get the new implant out, saying beating competitors to market was "priceless." J&J plans to appeal the verdict in the Ebaugh case. It's estimated thousands of women received the Ethicon implant between 2006 and 2012, and class-action lawsuits are underway in the US and Australia.