BIG PHARMA’S CRIME SPREE

s a riveting report by David Evans in the current issue of Bloomberg Markets Magazine relying on recent criminal legal settlements. It leaves no doubt about the fact that Big Pharma’s buiness practices are defined by criminal activities. Finding cures is not even remotely a consideration for this industry, as it would present a financial conflict of interest.

“Across the U.S., pharmaceutical companies have been pleading guilty to criminal charges or paying penalties in civil cases when the U.S. Department of Justice finds that they deceptively marketed drugs for unapproved uses, putting millions of people at risk of chest infections, heart attacks, suicidal impulses or death. Since May 2004, Pfizer, Eli Lilly & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and four other drug companies have paid a total of $7 billion in fines and penalties. Six of the companies admitted in court that they marketed medicines for unapproved uses.”

“About 15% of drug sales in the U.S. are for unapproved uses without adequate evidence the medicines work.”

he widespread off-label promotion of drugs for untested, unapproved uses is a manifestation of a health-care system that is dysfunctional as it is costly. Americans are paying exorbitant prices for drugs that put their lives at increased risk of death. Indeed, a conservative estimate by the Institute of Medicine (2000) is 106,000 preventable deaths from non-error adverse prescription drug effects.

In September 2007, New York-based Bristol- Myers paid $515 million-without admitting or denying wrongdoing-to federal and state governments in a civil lawsuit brought by the Justice Department. The six other companies pleaded guilty in criminal cases.

The evidence is inescapable: “Marketing departments of many drug companies don’t respect any boundaries of professionalism or the law,” says Jerry Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Indeed, rather than having a deterrent effect, the number of Big Pharma high profile criminal settlements is increasing and the settlements are getting bigger.

Bloomberg documents how companies such as Pfizer and Eli Lilly–each has been prosecuted repeatedly for the same crimes–are, if anything, emboldened as repeat offenders–ignoring FDA admonitions, as well as promises made to the Department of Justice not to break the law.

In January, 2004, “the Pfizer unit, Warner-Lambert, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of marketing a drug for unapproved uses. New York-based Pfizer agreed to pay $430 million in criminal fines and civil penalties, and the company’s lawyers assured prosecutor Michael Loucks and three other prosecutors that Pfizer and its units would stop promoting drugs for unauthorized purposes. What Loucks, who’s now acting U.S. attorney in Boston, didn’t know until years later was that Pfizer managers were breaking that pledge not to practice so-called offlabel marketing even before the ink was dry on their plea.”

“Jeff Kindler, who became Pfizer’s general counsel in 2002, supervised the lawyers who made the promises to prosecutors. By 2004, Kindler increased the compliance budget 12-fold.”

“What Pfizer’s lawyers didn’t tell the prosecutors was that Pfizer was at that moment running an off-label marketing promotion using more than 100 of its salespeople” who were pitching Bextra for pain, a use the FDA explicitlyforbade Pfizer to promote!  In 2001, the FDA had rejected Pfizer’s application to market Bextra for pain because in clinical trials the drug had shown it could cause heart damage and death.

In her guilty plea (March 30, 2009), Mary Holloway, a Pfizer regional sales manager for the Northeastern US, acknowledged that her team promoted Bextra to doctors without disclosing the risks, and also acknowledged that her team “had solicited hospitals to create protocols to buy Bextra for the unapproved purpose of acute pain relief.  Her representatives didn’t mention the increased risk of heart attacks in their marketing…”

Kindler became chief executive officer in 2006. In Pfizer’s ethics guide, he says stories about misbehaving companies and executives abound. “Pfizer truly stands apart,” he says. “I am proud of our record.”

Instead of being held accountable for criminal marketing practices Pfizer and its corporate divisions engaged in, on Oct. 1, Kindler was elected to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a4yV1nYxCGoA&pos=10

Broken Links ? Questions ?

TO CONTACT JMB CLICK ON THE STAMP

FDA Required Disclosure

jmbblog

A podcast powered by FeedBurner

Send article as PDF to

Related posts:

1. Criminal Drug Marketing Remains an Issue "Pfizer, Eli Lilly & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and four...
2. Activist Groups that Fund Pharma Try to Regulate Silver as a Pesticide Iit was revealed that a handful of the activist agencies...
3. Pfizer busted…. again Federal prosecutors hit Pfizer Inc. with a record-breaking $2.3 billion...
4. Disposable Children Mini Serie / Drug Trials But a cadre of child psychiatrists at the nation's most...
5. Latest FDA Scam This FDA approval for the marketing of Crestor to healthy...
6. Doctor Fakes 21 Clinical Trial Results Big Pharma CEO Fakes Cancer while Pill-Pushing Doctor Fakes...
7. Disposable Children Mini Serie / Psychiatric Drug Part 02 The latest child casualty reported by the press, is four-year-old,...
8. Another Psychiatrist busted for conflict of interest ! William Weeks, MD a professor of psychiatry and community and...
9. Disposable Children Mini Serie / Psychiatric Drugs Public outrage about the fatal poisoning of four-year old Rebecca...
10. How dangerous are supplements ? Before you take any supplements, please READ the following.. your...
11. URGENT Stop Senator McCain Senator McCain Files New Bill That Attacks Your Access to...
12. Avandia, a Deadly Case of Déjà vu all over again Once again, the FDA is shown to be complicit in...
13. The War against supplements continue.. When it comes to pharmaceuticals, you see, killing 60,000 Americans...
14. Obama, FDA Muddy Whistleblower Waters President Obama and the Acting Commissioner at the Food and...
15. Disposable Children Mini Serie / ADHD Drugs The evidence shows that hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms emerge...
16. Iranian Barbarism How to take down an Iranian Government Website. Have fun...
17. The Aspirin Scam The drug offered no special protection. In all, 116 patients...
18. Obscene Drug Scam Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug...
19. Disposable Children Mini Serie / Drugging Toddler ! U.S. Doctors are prescribing the antidepressant, Effexor (150mg) for infants...
20. Placebo effect is getting stronger and stronger It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing...
21. Has the Obama administration already cowered ? How one company turned a rejection into a thumbs up,...
22. Swine Flu Mini Serie : Ten Things You’re Not Supposed to Know When people start dying in larger numbers from the swine...
23. Another Psychiatrist Busted ! How else can psychiatry explain the abysmal outcomes of patients...
24. Welcome, here the latest news Anti-aging Secrets New Trend : Kids eat now constantly...
25. Consumers Duped by Trans Fat Labeling FDA food labeling rules make it possible for consumers to...
26. Diabetes Drug Found to Promote Cancer Tumors Although a number of studies have recently implicated a synthetic...
27. Coronary Heart Disease best keept secret : a cardiologist spills the beans Statins and Statistics :the benefit of Pravachol can be...
28. Doc cured an invisible army of zombies !! "It's like a ghost population that were reported in the...
29. Tamiflu: complete hoax Tamiflu anti-viral drug revealed as complete hoax; Roche studies based...
30. Department of Health and Human Services Scandal Government Accountability Office (GAO) sting, investigators were able to invent...
31. PIZZA PREVENTS HEART ATTACKS and PIZZA PREVENTS CANCER? Have you ever wondered why your doctor simply does not...
32. Disposable Children Mini Serie / Foster Children AIDS Trials the controversy surrounding a 20-year period during which children in...
33. Coronary Heart Disease best kept secrets/ Statins The current guidelines are based on the assumption that cardiovascular...
34. Disposable Children Mini Serie / Should the EPA Accept Human Pesticide Experiments? Science, Technology, and Law Program (The National Academies of Science)...
35. Vaccines cause autism: the evidences Is it mere coincidence that rates of autism increased when...
36. Cancer Alternative Treatments Digest Part 7 / 3-BROMOPYRUVATE THIS IS A DRUG THAT YOU WILL NEVER SEE ON...
37. Of 1,534 cancer studies , a third had conflicts of interests Of the 1,534 cancer studies identified in these journals, 29...

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!