*Rema Nagarajan* * * *Mar 13, 2011* In 2008, Dr Joseph Biederman, a renowned child psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, was discovered to have received $1.4 million from drug companies — in return for helping Johnson & Johnson generate and disseminate data that would support the use of an anti-psychotic drug in children. The drug was Risperdal.
In 2001, Dr Joseph Spinella and four other American doctors pleaded guilty to receiving money in exchange for writing prescriptions for Lupron, which is used to treat prostate cancer. Its manufacturer, Takeda Abbott, paid $875 million to settle. In January 2009, Eli Lilly paid $1.4 bn to settle charges that it had persuaded doctors to prescribe a schizophrenia and bipolar disorder drug to children and the elderly even though it was known to be risky. The drug was called Zyprexa. With many more such cases, the pharmaceutical industry is now being called the biggest defrauder of the US government. A quick analysis of the penalties the industry has paid under the False Claims Act (FCA) reveals that it has overtaken even the defence industry. This is extraordinary because the arms sector had long been at the top of the list of defrauders. According to Public Citizen, a watchdog group, the pharma industry paid almost $ 20bn in penalties in the last two decades for violating the False Claims Act. More than half the fines — a whopping $10.5 bn — were paid by just four companies, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Schering-Plough. Incidentally, almost all these companies have a strong presence in India. Many remain repeat offenders. Last year, Pfizer was slapped with a $2.3 bn penalty. It was the fourth time it was penalized. So why do these drug companies continue down this road? Observers say the enormous fines are a pittance compared to profits. Eli Lilly, for instance, paid a fine of just over one-fourth of its $4 bn annual profits from Zyprexa. Dr Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen says drug companies seem "desperate to maintain their high margins of profit in the face of a dwindling number of important new drugs". http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-13/special-report/28685397_1_drug-companies-eli-lilly-sidney-wolfe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mental Health Advocacy (News 'N Views) India" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/MhaNewsViewsIndia?hl=en ------------- Affiliated Groups : MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY INDIA [email protected] Discussions on mental health law / policy / plan monitoring / human rights etc [email protected] India-specific news and views related to mental health [email protected] Information and support to carers of people with mental health issues [email protected] Mutual support and sharing of experiential knowledge, skills and social learning amongst peers
