[Bob Dawson]

For constant news about Pharma, follow Jim Edwards Pharma Analysis at BNET (a CBS Interactive company).
http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/blog/?tag=shell;content
You can register and receive news alerts for free.

Here is a recent link he provided, from the Washington Post, based on a report by Bloomberg.

When drug makers' profits outweigh penalties
by David Evans, Bloomberg News, March 21, 2010
....For this new felony, Pfizer paid the largest criminal fine in U.S. history: $1.19 billion. On the same day, it paid $1 billion to settle civil cases involving the off-label promotion of Bextra and three other drugs with the United States and 49 states.
"At the very same time Pfizer was in our office negotiating and resolving the allegations of criminal conduct in 2004, Pfizer was itself in its other operations violating those very same laws," Loucks, 54, says. "They've repeatedly marketed drugs for things they knew they couldn't demonstrate efficacy for. That's clearly criminal."
…Since May 2004, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb and four other drug companies have paid a total of $7 billion in fines and penalties. …
In January 2009, Lilly, …pleaded guilty and paid $1.42 billion in fines… it had illegally marketed Zyprexa, a drug approved for the treatment of schizophrenia, as a remedy for dementia in elderly patients.
In five company-sponsored clinical trials, 31 people out of 1,184 participants died after taking the drug for dementia -- twice the death rate for those taking a placebo, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
…As large as the penalties are for drug companies caught breaking the off-label law, the fines are tiny compared with the firms' annual revenue.
The $2.3 billion in fines and penalties Pfizer paid for marketing Bextra and three other drugs ….amount to just 14 percent of its $16.8 billion in revenue from selling those medicines from 2001 to 2008.
The total of $2.75 billion Pfizer has paid in off-label penalties since 2004 is a little more than 1 percent of the company's revenue of $245 billion from 2004 to 2008.
Lilly already had a criminal conviction for misbranding a drug when it broke the law again in promoting schizophrenia drug Zyprexa for off-label uses beginning in 1999. The medication provided Lilly with $36 billion in revenue from 2000 to 2008. That's more than 25 times as much as the total penalties Lilly paid in January. ….
Companies regard the risk of multimillion-dollar penalties as just another cost of doing business…
Direct link to Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...031905578.html

[paula_w]

Sounds like bribery when it should be murder charges. They really are "special" aren't they?

paula

[Bob Dawson]

Jim Edwards, Pharma Analysis, BNET (a CBS Interactive company), March 31, 2010

http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/1000...cutives-might/
“A curious meme has developed in the business media recently on the topic of whether more pharmaceutical executives should be criminally prosecuted and placed in prison…..

…The answer is yes. If you’re serious about wanting drug companies to stay within the law, then actual imprisonment is something that the Department of Justice and the FDA needs to get serious about. Until now, they haven’t.
Currently, drug companies have no proper incentive to behave. The DOJ has extracted massive settlements — $2.3 billion from Pfizer (PFE) in one case — which, normally, you’d think would be a deterrent to lawbreaking. But drug company revenues are so massive that even these gargantuan fines don’t significantly impact the company. Pfizer makes $50 billion in revenues annually.
Counter-intuitively, these fines may actually encourage illegal drug marketing….”

[pacem]

Originally Posted by Bob Dawson

Jim Edwards, Pharma Analysis, BNET (a CBS Interactive company), March 31, 2010

http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/1000...cutives-might/
“A curious meme has developed in the business media recently on the topic of whether more pharmaceutical executives should be criminally prosecuted and placed in prison…..

…The answer is yes. If you’re serious about wanting drug companies to stay within the law, then actual imprisonment is something that the Department of Justice and the FDA needs to get serious about. Until now, they haven’t.
Currently, drug companies have no proper incentive to behave. The DOJ has extracted massive settlements — $2.3 billion from Pfizer (PFE) in one case — which, normally, you’d think would be a deterrent to lawbreaking. But drug company revenues are so massive that even these gargantuan fines don’t significantly impact the company. Pfizer makes $50 billion in revenues annually.
Counter-intuitively, these fines may actually encourage illegal drug marketing….”

Where is all this money going? The fines are paid to ...? Get an accounting (FOIA).

[Bob Dawson]

Jim Edwards, Pharma Analysis, BNET (a CBS Interactive company)
Follow Jim’s brave reporting. The man knows right from wrong and has the courage to name names.
Memo to the DOJ: Pfizer Isn't "Too Big to Nail" -- Don't Let Management Off the Hook
Apparently federal prosecutors believe that Pfizer (PFE) is “too big to nail”… Wrong! The Department of Justice has all the tools it needs to discipline the company — the world’s largest seller of drugs by revenues — but prosecutors choose not to use them.
CNN reported today that prosecutors’ $2.3 billion settlement with Pfizer over its mismarketing of Bextra, a painkiller, included the creation of a special shell company, “Pharmacia & Upjohn Co. Inc.” that would plead guilty to the charges. That guilty plea would automatically exclude the company from government funded drug programs. P&UCI sold no drugs and had no real employees, and its creation was simply a figleaf to allow a Pfizer entity to take the rap without harming Pfizer itself…

… Prosecuting individuals, however, is a much more serious way of reforming company behavior. The CEO of Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to a criminal charge for his marketing of OxyContin. He and his cronies have been excluded from doing business with Medicare and Medicaid….

… Prosecutors did convict two people at Pfizer in the Bextra case, but they were both lower level sales people. What the DOJ pointedly failed to do was bring charges against anyone in management, even though the case threw up evidence indicating that management approved of its sales force’s off-label promotion….
http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/1000...-off-the-hook/