MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY: DEEP GEORGIA TIES

Georgia is home to scores of medical device companies, including some of the biggest and oldest. The majority of the world’s sutures are made at the Cornelia plant of Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon. The industry estimates it contributes $3.1 billion to the state’s economy. The Southeastern Medical Device Association is headquartered in Roswell.

The state’s biotech ambitions extend to startups, too. U.S. News and World Report ranks Georgia Tech’s biomedical engineering graduate program No. 2 in the country. Tech in 2012 helped establish the multimillion-dollar Global Center for Medical Innovation, a nonprofit facility in Atlanta that helps develop medical devices and guides companies through processes like 510(k) clearance to get them to market.

The industry is known for its savvy advocacy. Georgia has one congressman on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee, Rep. Buddy Carter. His biggest political donor, Brasseler USA, is a dental and medical device company in Savannah.

On the flip side, the lawsuits alleging patients were injured or killed tend to have prominent Georgia players. Lawyers leading national litigation over medical devices work in Atlanta and Athens, as do lawyers for companies such as the device maker Bard. The federal court in Atlanta is currently hosting a massive set of lawsuits concerning mesh implants and another concerning hip implants. Of five “bellwether plaintiffs” picked to test the Bard filter cases in Arizona, two are from Georgia.

The companies being sued often have Georgia ties. C.R. Bard, recently acquired by Becton Dickinson, is facing thousands of lawsuits in West Virginia over a surgical mesh made at its plant in Covington. Ethicon, facing thousands of lawsuits in Atlanta over surgical mesh implants, has plants in Athens and Cornelia that make other devices. Stryker, whose metal-on-metal hip implants were tied to cases of metal poisoning, also manufactures cranial and facial implants at a plant in Newnan.

Devices made in Georgia include high-tech cancer probes, needles, surgical instruments, radioactive “seed” implants to treat cancer, catheters and sutures; varied devices are also made at contract medical manufacturers.