With Abbott’s $1.5 billion settlement of a whistleblower-initiated case this week, Abbott joins an infamous list of pharma companies that have paid more than one billion dollars to the federal government for illegal marketing practices, including promoting prescription drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, paying financial inducements to increase sales and engaging in practices that pose grave danger to patients’ health and lives.
This dishonor roll includes pharma giants Pfizer, which paid $2.3 billion to the government in 2009, and Eli Lilly, which settled civil and criminal charges earlier in 2009 for $1.4 billion.
Soon there will be more additions to pharma’s billion-dollar-plus club: GlaxoSmithKline announced last November that it had reached an agreement in principle to pay $3 billion this year to resolve multiple government investigations into its sales and marketing practices. And Johnson & Johnson (J&J ) reportedly is in negotiations with the government to pay more than $1 billionto settle civil charges for the off-label marketing of Risperdal and Invega.
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Yet the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the major pharma lobbying group, claims its members are “committed to following the highest ethical standards and al legal requirements,” according to PhRMA’s website. To demonstrate this, PhRMA members developed the “Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals,” which states that:
"Ethical relationships with healthcare professionals are critical to our mission of helping Patients . . . An important part of achieving this mission is ensuring that healthcare professionals have the latest, most accurate information available regarding prescription medicines.”
It is no small irony that nearly 60 pharma companies — including Abbott,Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Glaxo, J&J and Amgen – are signatories to the code. For at least three of them — Abbott, Pfizer and Eli Lilly – the PhRMA code was in place while they committed these billion-dollar-plus violations. (The details of the Glaxo, J&J and Amgen cases haven’t been announced yet since the whistleblower cases that started the government investigations are not public.)
The disconnect between the self-serving proclamations of “high ethical standards” and the reality of pharma’s conduct is vast. In Abbott’s case, the Justice Department press release states that “Not only did Abbott engage in off-label promotion, but it targeted elderly dementia patients and downplayed the risks apparent from its own clinical studies.”
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