Faustian Posted September 3, 2009 Report Share Posted September 3, 2009 Maybe this could've gone into the health thread as evidence for what happens in the US healthcare system at present, but I thought it is worthy of its own thread.... Big business playing with peoples lives....real nice. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8235550.stm Pfizer whistleblower's drug fear One of the whistleblowers in the Pfizer healthcare fraud scandal has said he felt he was "swimming upstream" when the firm was illegally promoting drugs. "It's hard to do what's right when everyone else around you is following management sales directive," John Kopchinski told the BBC's World Today. Mr Kopchinski was awarded $50m (£31m)for helping expose Pfizer's wrongdoing. Pfizer is paying $2.3bn after promoting four drugs for conditions different to those for which they were approved. Ray Kerins, a spokesman for Pfizer, said the company had a strong commitment to compliance transparency. "We're looking towards the future and seeing what can we learn from this situation and ensure we have the best policies and practices in place," he said. Increased dosages Mr Kopchinski described how Pfizer's 3,000 sales representatives were told to promote Bextra in areas of medicine where the use of the drug had not been studied. "They tried to have orthopaedics use Bextra pre-surgery and post-surgery. Bextra hadn't been studied in that area," he said. "If I were going into surgery I wouldn't want to use a drug that had not been studied for that cause." He also described how they were told to push the dosage up when promoting the drug to physicians, in some cases up to eight times the recommended dosage. "At that particular dosage you're subjecting patients to a host of side effects and other areas that have not been studied scientifically, so literally you have no idea what's going to happen," he said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bangkoktraveler Posted September 3, 2009 Report Share Posted September 3, 2009 I hope nothing like this happens to KY, the American Dream. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cavanami Posted September 3, 2009 Report Share Posted September 3, 2009 Pfizer whistleblower's ordeal reaps big rewards http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090903/bs_nm/us_pfizer_whistleblower Taking on corporate giants can feel like tilting at windmills, but John Kopchinski's six-year legal battle against Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) just made him a rich man. The Gulf War veteran and former Pfizer sales representative will earn more than $51.5 million as a result of his whistleblower lawsuit against the world's biggest drugmaker and the record penalty the company must pay the U.S. government for its massive marketing transgressions... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.