Pharmageddon A Nation Betrayed by Sheller Stephen & Kirkpatrick Sidney

Author:Sheller, Stephen & Kirkpatrick, Sidney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Exposing the Betrayal

When I began my career, I could never have imagined that a firm I headed would win three back-to-back record-breaking pharmaceutical qui tam whistleblower cases. I was justifiably proud of the accomplishment but still had to ask myself if our litigation had actually changed pharmaceutical companies’ behavior.

The settlements we won temporarily lowered the market shares of three giant drug producers and put several billion dollars back into federal and state treasuries, yet none of the corporate officers who put their companies into jeopardy were held personally accountable. Executives were not asked to return the millions of dollars in bonuses and stock options they’d received, and none were charged with criminal behavior. And though these companies were forced to sign corporate integrity agreements, our experience with Pfizer—and again later with AstraZeneca—had taught us that such agreements weren’t enforced. It was a Pyrrhic victory, a single battle won in the midst of a war we were losing.

All of the major drugs we had focused upon—Zyprexa, Seroquel, Zyvox, and Geodon—were and are still on the market. I would try once again to take on a pharmaceutical giant in court, this time to exact justice beyond a monetary settlement. Most important, I wanted to expose the depth of the betrayal: from the executives who wrote the marketing playbook to the pandering physicians, media conglomerates, and other paid shills who marketed the drugs. Maybe I could also upset the FDA’s partnerships with those corporations they were charged, but failed, to regulate.

Foremost on my radar, since going at Eli Lilly, was Johnson & Johnson (J&J), whom we knew had fraudulently marketed its blockbuster antipsychotic Risperdal off-label to nonschizophrenics. Not only had our whistleblower drug reps told us about J&J’s off-label marketing schemes, but former J&J employees had also agreed to act as expert witnesses. The challenge would be in framing our case in such a way as to expose the greater picture of how J&J, the largest health product manufacturer in the world, and its Janssen subsidiary, the maker of Risperdal and Invega, had gained off-label market share. Drug reps took their marching orders from the top.

Among the active and former J&J drug reps to speak to us was Victoria Starr, who is as fine and brave a young woman as I’ve had the pleasure to represent. A second generation pharmacist, with a degree from Washington State University, Vicki had begun her career as an Eli Lilly sales rep based in Portland, Oregon. She made the jump to J&J’s Janssen subsidiary in 2001, where, at age 30, she believed she would make greater use of her extensive pharmacology expertise.

Quick to laugh as she is to cry, Vicki had a rude awakening when she entered the Janssen training program. She was not expected to sell Risperdal using technical arguments. Rather, she was encouraged to make generalizations that would induce pediatricians and others to prescribe the drug off-label. Risperdal, she was to tell prescribers, could be used to calm upset children. Physicians had only to lower the adult dosage.

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