CounterPunch: What Integrity Means to Pfizer

Pfizer’s $2.3 billion health care fraud settlement with the government announced this month by the US Department of Justice adds some firsts to the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company. It covers Pfizer’s kickbacks to health care providers and false claims submitted to government health care programs, also known as our tax dollars, in violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Forty-three states will share in the “give backs.”

Martha Rosenberg
CounterPunch
September 30, 2009

The satire was biting:

“Thanks for making time to see me today,” posted a rep on cafepharma about a fictitious sales meeting with a psychiatrist. “Now, I know that you used Neurontin in the past for every condition under the sun. Pfizer knows very well that you guys were and still continue to be the largest writers of off-label Lyrica and so, in the spirit of Bextra [withdrawn in 2004] will you please write Lyrica as much as possible? Remember Dr, this is Pfizer. The company that never met an off-label sale that it wouldn’t cover-up.”

Don’t forget, writes the next poster on the pharma site, the psychiatrist answers, “Great! and I also heard that it is about to be approved on state Medicaid and I can write it for anything. Is this true?” to which the rep assents in defiance of, “that nice little 2004 CIA agreement.”

Pfizer’s nice little 2004 “CIA” or Corporate Integrity Agreement in which a company promises to sin no more to which the poster refers was for fraudulent marketing of seizure drug Neurontin. It was preceded by a CIA for fraud related to Pfizer’s cholesterol drug, Lipitor, in 2002.

And this month it’s followed by a CIA for mis-marketing pain drug Bextra, antipsychotic Geodon, seizure drug Lyrica and antibiotic Zyvox.

Read entire article: http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenberg09302009.html

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