BIG PHARMA’S CRIME SPREE

Rather than having a deterrent effect, the number of Big Pharma high profile criminal settlements is increasing and the settlements are getting bigger.

BIG PHARMA’S CRIME SPREE is 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 business practices are defined by criminal activities. Finding cures is not even remotely a consideration by pharmaceutical executives, as it would present a financial conflict of interest.





But those fines are tiny compared to the revenues from criminally marketed sales:
Eli Lilly Zyprexa sales from criminal marketing yielded the company $36 billion from 2000 to 2008.

And Pfizer's recent $2.3 billion settlement in fines and penalties for the illegal marketing of Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox and Lyrica pales in comparison to the $16.8 billion the company garnered from its criminal marketing of these drugs. Indeed, the total penalties Pfizer has paid in settlements--$2.75 billion, since 2004--is but 1% of the company's revenue of $245 billion from 2004 to 2008.

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Pfizer and its executives have thus successfully avoided criminal culpability while paying the settlements but maintaining that it was not responsible for the illegal actions of the dozens of companies it acquired--actions that continued after Pfizer acquired them:

Bloomberg reports:

"From 1995 to 2005, Pfizer purchased more than 20 companies. Since 2004, companies that are now Pfizer divisions have pleaded guilty to off-label marketing of two drugs. Pfizer continued off-label promotions for these medications after buying the firms, according to Pfizer’s Sept. 2 guilty plea and FDA correspondence with Pfizer.

Pfizer first stepped into an off-label scheme in 1999, when it offered to buy Morris Plains, New Jersey–based Warner-Lambert Co. Prosecutors charged that Warner-Lambert marketed Neurontin off-label between 1995 and 1999. Warner-Lambert admitted doing so for one year in a May 2004 guilty plea for which Pfizer paid $430 million in fines and penalties."

Ver...

Ver Pfizer Broke the Law by Promoting Drugs for Unapproved Uses

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