CNN: Evidence Big Pharma Owns The U.S. Government

[democracy1st]

Run time: 08:43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io7x8p2GwZI   Posted on YouTube: March 13, 2010 By YouTube Member: MoxNewsDotCom Views on YouTube: 2   Posted on DU: March 13, 2010 By DU Member: democracy1st Views on DU: 3787

 
http://MOXNews.com/
March 12, 2010 CNN

(Bloomberg) -- Pfizer Inc. agreed to a $1.2 billion criminal fine, the largest in U.S. history, and a felony plea by a subsidiary to close an investigation into what government lawyers described as fraudulent marketing of drugs.

The fine, over sales practices for a painkiller since pulled from the market, makes up the biggest single share of a record $2.3 billion settlement, announced today, between the U.S. Justice Department and New York-based Pfizer. The deal includes $1 billion in civil penalties, the largest non-criminal fraud case against a drugmaker, the department said.

Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, entered into a five- year integrity agreement with the Health and Human Services Department as well. The government pays for medicines through several health programs and joined the investigation after private whistleblowers filed lawsuits in three states. The criminal case revolved around allegations that the painkiller Bextra and three other medicines were promoted for uses other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a4h7V5lc_xXM

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/09/pfizer_whistleblower_tells_his.html

http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10004218/pfizer-rep-claims-bextra-pushed-on-nhls-blue-jackets/

[bbgrunt]

1. thanks cnn. Is this a fluke or are you going to start some

real investigative reporting?

[laughingliberal]

2. Yeah, kind of surprising. A good surprise for a change. nt

[valerief]

16. +1

[Celebration]

3. True--shutting down Pfizer was not an option

I actually buy the argument that people depend on their drugs, and kicking them out of Medicare was simply not an option.

But I tell you what would prevent all this crap--charge the executives criminally for fraud, and throw them in the clinker. THAT would actually be effective in preventing all this, without unduly hurting either the people dependent on these drugs or the minor shareholders.

[livingonearth]

5. I like your idea.

I like that revolving dodecahedron too.

[liberation]

7. Lots of the "non profitable" drugs are mostly financed via public research grants...

... anything that has not to do with insanely stupid treatments or dealing with male impotence, chances are was developed in a big part via public grants and educational research. I say, there should be a requirement for drugs spin off those grants to be made public domain and any major manufacturer should be required to allow second sourcing. Period.

Any company which provides a vital service for citizens, and is considered "too big to fail" should be nationalized or at the very least heavily regulated and audited. Else, we end up in the perennial "black mail" situation we have found ourselves in for a while now. If a company has the capacity to charge whatever they want for something which is indispensable for the lives of many... they are indeed in a position of basically extorting their "customers." .

[axollot]

8. Agree with you there - but there has to be a way to break a company

up after prosecuting the top brass. People that need medication wouldnt have their meds stopped but Pfizer wouldnt be..."to big to fail" anymore either.

Cheers
Sandy

[Wizard777]

12. If they were Illegally selling drugs.

Why couldn't the government seize all their assets like any other illegal drug dealer? Auction off their patents and property. But that might bring prices down. The new owners couldn't say we have to charge an arm & a leg because we spent billion developing these drugs. No you didn't! You spent a couple of million for them at a DEA Auction.

or

Why can't heroin dealers use this same argument? Too many people depend on our product for you to be shutting us down. Baltimore City Maryland alone has 60,000 heroin addicts. If you interupt the supply they will flood emergency rooms trying to get oxy's and methadone. Some could even die from withdrawls. We have too great of a hold on the public for you to be even thinking about putting us out of business.

:shrug:

[naaman fletcher]

18. Sure it was...

Just give them 60 days to auction of their drugs, patents, etc. to other companies.

[Uncle Joe]

21. I agree.

:thumbsup:

[TankLV]

28. or... Have the GOVERNMENT Take over and OWN the Laboratories

you know - since we have PAYED for all the research...

Kinda like NASA or the FERMI Labs, etc.

There are plenty of examples for it.

Fire ALL the EXECUTIVES and SALES PEOPLE - and get to actually doing what's GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE!!!

I am so sick and tired of this "too big to fail" bullshit.

Funny how they never cared about the STEEL industry in places like Buffalo or Bethlehem - and THAT put HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS out of work!!!

[Enthusiast]

4. Justice? I think not.

Just like with the Bush Administration (BushCo). No accountability. But some, "the little guy" always have to answer for their crimes. And this is undermining the very soul of the nation.

[Lint Head]

6. This is an example of the fact that our country is run by a criminal

organization. If your big enough you can steal and kill and get away with it.

[kimmerspixelated]

15. Big Pharma runs itself like the mafia.

They love to break the legs and families of anyone not part of any naysayers. Look at all the ads on national tv-mostly drug ads-ask your doctor...open up any largely commercial magazine and they are filled with drug ads. They even make sure any natural solution ads are not run along with theirs-sometimes not at all!

[axollot]

9. Why would the doctors use this medication after surgeries?

These types of anti-inflam can cause internal bleeding and Bextra is a strong one. There is a major failure on the doctor/surgeons here to not be so won over by these sales reps. and prescribe something like Bextra.
Cheers
Sandy

[Beavker]

10. Wow.

The amount of scumbaggery in this country is unfathomable. It's like trying to comprehend the vastness of outer space. Impossible and limited only by the imagination. How much of this country's wealth is built on fraud, lies or moral deception? Cut that out and we're probably on line with Haiti or Somalia or something for net Wealth. These a-holes should be all jailed, fined to the teeth, and then apply these fines to the national deficit. A handful of wealthy CEO's, and their Wall Street companies could rid of off the deficit in a short period of time. Think of it as a tax on fraud and deceit.

[kimmerspixelated]

14. Agreed! Good ideas!

[Wizard777]

11. So we can defund ACORN for not commiting any crimes. But we can't defund Pfizer for commiting crimes

:wtf:

:banghead: Until that damned wall falls!

[Demoiselle]

13. Didn't a US District Court Judge rule the defunding of ACORN unconstitutional in December?

...Judge Gershon, I believe...in Brooklyn? Said the defunding was a Bill of Attainder. (A Big Constitutional No No.)
One tiny bright spot in the news anyway.

[Wizard777]

22. Yes, but Pfizer plead Guilty through a subsidiary.

So Congress would be be on more solid ground de-funding Pfizer.

[tomm2thumbs]

17. disturbing - must watch video - thanks for posting

and no doubt how many calls went out to CNN to 'not run that story again' or we'll pull our ads... ?

[sulphurdunn]

19. A simple questions

Q. How could this nation wide criminality go on for so many years without the FDA or Pfizer management being aware of it?
A. It couldn't.

[Wizard777]

23. Simple answers. The Bush Family owns stock in Pfizer.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, democracy1st.

[nightrain]

24. knr. so disgustingly typical...

[demi moore]

25. omg.. i have a great idea..

what if i built a robot... made it so it was a corporation some how (im sure that wont be to hard.) then program it to do all my evil bidding!

under the u.s constitution my robot will be a person! then when it gets caught it will have to do the jail time! and not me!!

im lovin it

[WarhammerTwo]

26. As a research scientist at another leading Pharma company...

...I hang my head in shame. And just to let you know, us scientists ain't in on the scam. It's all the business end. Not on the science end. Just like in this story. The marketing pushed the drugs for unintended uses. I bet a lot of the low level, bench working scientists knew nothing about it. It's all schemed out in the board rooms, not the laboratories. Do you know that all of the decisions of which diseases we pursue for cures comes from our marketing department? They look to see where the biggest market share is and tell our head honchos to funnel funding into that kind of research.

Perfect example: I did Infectious Disease research looking for new antibiotics, especially for MRSA. Well, they closed us down and shipped all of our programs and work up to our Canadian facility. Many of us suspect it was sent up there to die a quiet death. We could be wrong, but that's a pretty common consensus. You know what they have all of us doing now? Supporting anti-obesity research which many of us scientists think is an absolute and total waste of time and money.

Ya see, it costs a lot of money to find a drug. When I was screening antibacterial candidates, I would use these little, rectangular plates with little, tiny wells in them. They were specially coated with stuff to react with irradiated antibodies...how it works is irrelevant. The point is, I would use 30 of these to screen almost 2,900 compounds a day, 5 days a week. Y'know how much each plate cost? $100. For just the plates alone, I was blowing $15,000 a week. That's not including any of the reagents or radio-labeled compound or the pipette tips or my salary or anything. Just the plates. And do you know how many drugs I found that were effective against MRSA in over 4 years? One. And do you know what happened it to it? It never made it past the in vivo efficacy phase in rats. When we put it in an animal, it got metabolized so quickly that it was ineffective. ANd when we messed with the structure to increase stability, the efficacy I saw in my expensive little plates went out the window. So all that time, all that money and we got jack. That's actually why drugs cost so much. We spend TONS of money to find drugs and 98% of the time, we get no return on the investment. When we finally do hit a marketable drug, we need to recoup not only the investment on the drug itself but on all the failures nobody ever hears about.

So they closed our department and shipped it away since the investment necessary to find a good MRSA drug would not yield significant returns... especially since MRSA isn't that widespread. Not like obesity, anyway. I mean, just think of all the overweight people out there with their diabetes and heart disease. If we could find a pill that would allow these folks to eat and eat and eat and keep their weight down, we'd be rich! Rich, I tells ya! We'd all be happy misers! The market for that kind of drug is HUGE! No pun intended. So this is the work I do. It's not decided by the scientists or researcher. It's guided by marketing. And it aggravates the hell out of all of us scientists. And this is how EVERY pharmaceutical company works. Every one. I wish I knew how to fix it....

[Quantess]

29. Interesting, Thank you for posting your perspective.

I would say welcome to DU,except you've been a DUer for several years. :hi:

[Poll_Blind]

31. One of the things I like about DU is when a member is able to come in and...

...comment on a story because, in some way, they're part of it. I read your account carefully and there's no reason for me to doubt it.

I do not work in the pharmaceutical industry but I have read many interesting articles about how much money goes into research and how obscure and expensive some of the materials are which are required in order to do this kind of research.

It is fascinating in its own right.

But the thing that catches on my sweater, in a manner of speaking, is that "profit" is defined (at least from one source) as "the excess of revenues over outlays in a given period of time". I understand the outlays are fabulously expensive, but when the profits are so high for this industry, I can't help but believe that the position (not necessarily yours, IMO) that "it is very expensive to perform research" is somewhat deceptive given the context of the situation.

Again, I'm not ascribing that position or the deceptive nature of it to what you posted- just making that observation.

Thank you for posting that.

PB

[TankLV]

27. Is this just a once in a great while minor report - or does it have legs...

I hold out no hope for justice...

[slipslidingaway]

30. kick - follow up story and thread in GD ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8077636&mesg_id=8077636

[Indi Guy]

32. CNN (like all msm) is a schill for Multinational Coorperations...

If CNN is given the OK to out Pfizer -- imagine the smokescreen this creates for all manor of larger abuses, on all levels of commerce.

When the big guns get silenced -- the bigger guns are ready to fire.