UK: The deadly sins of greedy pharmaceutical companies

[Guest guest]

" GSK is not the only big pharmaceutical company to find itself under

fire. As a result of investigative work by Britain’s Medicines and

Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, it was recently discovered that

the Swiss drugs giant Roche failed to report 15,161 deaths among American

patients who used its drugs. On top of this, a further 65,000 cases of

suspected side effects from those drugs were covered up. "

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-2174537/CITY-FOCUS-The-deadly-sins-greedy-pharmaceutical-companies.html

CITY FOCUS: The deadly sins of greedy pharmaceutical

companies

By

Brummer

PUBLISHED: 16:26 EST, 16 July 2012 | UPDATED: 10:39 EST, 18

July 2012

One of Britain’s largest and most thriving companies earlier this month

agreed to pay American authorities a record fine of £1.9billion after

indulging in egregious behaviour.

And despite the fine – more than six times that paid by Barclays for

interest-rate rigging – the company’s chief executive enjoyed an

eye-watering pay packet of £6.7million last year.

The offending corporation was not another rapacious bank. It was the UK’s

leading pharmaceutical company, GlaxoKline, best known to British

consumers as the maker of such family-friendly brands as Lucozade and a

large number of the prescription drugs sitting in our bathroom

cabinets.

Bitter pills: A number of big pharmaceutical companies have found

themselves under fire

The company’s poor sales practices, which included free golf lessons and

fishing trips for doctors willing to listen to its spiel about the

anti-depressant Paxil (sold in the UK as Seroxat), led to the drug being

prescribed, on some occasions, to patients under 18 years old – patients

for whom it was unsuitable.

The result was that it induced suicidal tendencies and even caused actual

suicides among some of these exceptionally vulnerable young

people.

GSK is not the only big pharmaceutical company to find itself under fire.

As a result of investigative work by Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare

Products Regulatory Agency, it was recently discovered that the Swiss

drugs giant Roche failed to report 15,161 deaths among American patients

who used its drugs. On top of this, a further 65,000 cases of suspected

side effects from those drugs were covered up.

The Roche drugs included such high-profile medicines as Herceptin, which

is given to up to 10,000 breast cancer patients in Britain, as well as

Lucentis, used to treat about 20,000 UK patients a year suffering from

age-related loss of sight.

The agency’s advice is that patients should continue to take the drugs,

but its condemnation of Roche – with talk of ‘unacceptable’ practices and

‘inadequate’ reporting systems – was withering.

The GSK and Roche cases follow a pattern of the pharmaceutical industry

abusing the trust placed in them. Only last month, another of the giants

of the industry, Abbott Laboratories, was fined just over £1billion for

wrongful marketing its antipsychotic treatment Depakote.

The truth is that the big pharmaceutical companies, in their anxiety to

transform their expensive research and development costs into profits,

have regularly been aggressively selling compounds to patients for whom

they are unsuitable.

The result is that over the past two decades, despite the firms being

generally lauded for all that they have done to alleviate pain and halt

disease, they have paid a staggering £13billion in fines to the US

authorities.

Yet the drug companies clearly feel these fines are a price worth paying

for doing business.

The UK government tends to treat the drug industry with kid gloves.

Companies such as GSK, AstraZeneca and Shire, with their strong

research-based laboratories in Britain, are all world leaders.

Historically, drug companies in Britain have enjoyed an inbuilt

competitive advantage: the National Health Service, unique in the world,

has been a test-bed for new drugs, and provides a ready-made mass market

for the UK industry.

There has been much talk of late about the moral turpitude of bankers

living in a bubble of their own. Many of the same complaints could be

made about parts of the drugs industry, where executives claim that

because they are in an international market place their pay has to be set

at stratospheric levels.

Yet little of the opprobrium that has attached to the bankers, and kept

them out of the honours system since the 2008 crash, has been directed

towards the pill factories’ top executives.

GSK’s chief executive Sir Witty was knighted for services to the

economy and pharmaceutical industry in the New Year’s Honours list.

But the misconduct that has been at the heart of the culture of GSK, in

particular, is deeply disturbing.

The fines levied against the company by the US authorities are the

biggest ever against any pharmaceutical group. Nor were its offences

limited to the antidepressant Paxil alone.

Between 1999 and 2003, GSK also promoted Wellbutrin for a whole

series of treatments including weight loss, sexual dysfunction, substance

abuse, attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, even though the drug

had only been approved for major depression.

In the wake of the American criminal action and settlement, GSK embarked

on a communications campaign designed to show that under Witty, who took

over in 2008, the company had cleaned up its act.

There are allegations, however, that unacceptable sales tactics were

still going on in 2010, when the company was found to be offering ‘extra

incentives’ to staff who gathered in Las Vegas for the launch of the

asthma spray Advair – in contravention of recommended

guidelines.

The GSK and Roche cases show that UK drug companies have been less than

prudent in seeking to make as much profit as possible in the shortest

timeframe. GSK, under Witty’s guidance, says it is making a new

start.

But the practices of big pharma are a stain on the reputation of the

industry, and have had tragic outcomes for patients. In that sense, they

place the sins of bankers in the shade.

Read more:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-2174537/CITY-FOCUS-The-deadly-sins-greedy-pharmaceutical-companies.html#ixzz20zjcotyN

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Washington State, USA

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