Bribery, Fraud and Corruption Charges Against Big Pharma

by Catherine J. Frompovich

What happens when the ‘Average Joe’ gets caught committing a crime? He or she usually gets the book thrown at them, most often spending time in the slammer. However, what happens when “corporations too big to fail” get caught with “their hands in the cookie jar,” so to speak? Not very many folks pay the time, but the corporate treasury pays the fine. Why? Apparently, large sums of money can “absolve corporate sins” time after time after time. One industry that has had enormous fines levied against it is the pharmaceutical industry, also known as Big Pharma.

It is the opinion of this writer that Big Pharma’s corporate largess is too tempting to resist by federal government agencies, and fines work nicely. Pharma’s lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year contributing to congressional campaign coffers, which should be outlawed because it is nothing short of bribery—plain and simple. Obviously, a member of Congress will champion a cause – or is ‘morally’ obligated to do so – for the money Pharma’s lobbyists freely hand out. [3]

That being said, let’s change gears and consider only a fraction of apparent crimes and misdemeanors Big Pharma and/or its personnel allegedly have perpetrated. Some have resulted in fines while others – if not many – slid under the wire or evaded the radar screen. One in that particular category, which comes to mind, is the inclusion of the SV-40 cancer-causing virus in the polio vaccine until about the early 1970s. Here and here are two articles about viruses in vaccines, which should have been prosecuted under the category “crimes against humanity.” How come? Well, when federal and state health agencies mandate that children be given vaccines that undoubtedly are not safe nor proven to not contain viruses or mycoplasma that cause diseases down the line, then both Big Pharma and government agency personnel ought to be prosecuted, in my opinion. Maybe we’d have ‘safer’ vaccines?

Another equally questionable and seemingly non-prosecutable crime to date is the apparent research fraud perpetrated by Dr. Poul Thorsen, whom the U.S. CDC apparently ‘cannot find’ to prosecute regarding “fraud and embezzlement and the Danish vaccine-autism studies.” Here are a few articles that lay out that serious fraud, which the CDC apparently still stands behind and accepts Thorsen’s findings—ouch!

• Central Figure in CDC Vaccine Cover-Up Absconds with $2M
• The curious case of Poul Thorsen, fraud and embezzlement, and the Danish vaccine-autism studies 
• The Dangerous “EXPERTS” You Should Never Believe…

Back in September of 2012, Forbes published the article “Big Pharma’s Offshore Fraud Strategy” [1] wherein this appears in the very first paragraph:

…not to mention billion dollar liabilities for fraudulent marketing practices in the U.S.

So, how can U.S. patients, i.e., healthcare consumers, trust or believe in all the pharmaceuticals their physicians so freely prescribe, apparently at the behest of Pharma representatives? Ever go to a doctor’s office and see a Pharma rep with his/her suitcases filled with samples waiting patiently to be squeezed into doctor’s busy patient schedule?

Erica Kelton, who wrote that Forbes article, said pharmaceutical companies continue to pay “record criminal and civil fines in the U.S. for illegal marketing practices.” There’s a key word in that remark: fines! As long as Big Pharma can make billions of dollars in sales annually, it can continue its illegal marketing practices because the feds will get their ‘fair share’ of the profits from pharmaceutical sales, I contend. Both should be considered criminal activity on the part of federal government agencies and Big Pharma because Pharma continues to do the same thing again and again, only to be fined again and again. Can readers perceive the apparent profit cycle, especially at your expense both health-wise and monetarily?

Regarding bribery, Kelton states:

Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, paid $60.2 million last month [August 2012] to the U.S. to settle charges that the company bribed government officials – including hospital administrators, government doctors and members of regulatory and purchasing committees — in China, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Kazakhstan to approve and prescribe Pfizer products.

See how a round-robin cycle apparently works! And, ostensibly, it’s an ongoing thing. Reuters reported on May 14, 2014 that “4-Chinese police charge British former head of GSK in China with bribery.”  Also that

Other large international drugs manufacturers including Novartis AG, AstraZeneca Plc, Sanofi SA , Eli Lilly & Co and Bayer AG were also visited by Chinese officials in 2013 as part of a broad investigation into the business.

What is it that everyone doesn’t seem to be getting about Big Pharma that they get about other criminals such as sex offenders, i.e., when you do the crime, you pay the time. Sex offenders prey on relatively few victims as compared to the millions that Big Pharma’s fraud and deceit impact.

Obviously, Big Pharma has not been playing by the rules—otherwise, why the fines, yet we entrust them to make the medicines that supposedly make us well—or is that a sham too? How can we trust them, if they are dishonest with regard to some business practices?

Furthermore, Erica Kelton points out that in 2009 Pfizer paid $2.3 billion “for improper and illegal marketing of certain prescription drugs in the U.S.” Seemingly, Big Pharma is not prosecutable for crimes—only fines—which appear to be a ‘cash cow’ for the U.S. Treasury.

How about all the taxes the U.S. collects on each vaccine sold along with apparently holding patents on some vaccines? Caching, caching goes the cash register. Can that be a reason for mandating more and more vaccines be injected into more and more people from birth to very old age? Should we follow the money? as they say.

Are pharmaceutical crimes not prosecuted and people-perpetrators not sent to prison so that Big Pharma can create more revenue for the U.S. treasury? Is that why the pharmaceutical industry apparently can do whatever it wants, and as often as it wants, as long as it can pony up fine money? It seems that is a never-ending, fine-generating-cycle that has become engrained in the pharmaceutical culture—business as usual. Most often healthcare consumers wind up being at risk; note class action lawsuits. Still, Congress nor the U.S. CDC or FDA do nothing to close down operations or prosecute Pharma executives with prison time. When will that stop? Probably when healthcare consumers finally realize how they’ve been taken for a sleigh ride about pharmaceuticals and vaccines, I contend.

To further elucidate and attest to my statements above about ‘criminal cycles’ and ‘cash cows’, Kelton notes several fines Big Pharma paid.

GlaxoSmithKline paid $3 billion in July [2012] — which was the largest healthcare settlement ever — as well as $237 million in 2008 to settle two separate cases. Bristol-Myers paid $389 million in 2008. AstraZeneca paid $520 million in 2010 and $266 million in 2003. [1]

In another Forbes article “Is Big Pharma Addicted to Fraud?” Kelton states that GlaxoSmithKline paid $750 million in 2009 to resolve civil and criminal charges. [2]

Furthermore, Eli Lilly & Co. paid $29.4 million to settle allegations that they had bribed government officials and others in China.

One law firm – Katz, Marshall and Banks, LLP – advertises as a law firm representing “Pharmaceutical Industry Whistleblowers.” Here’s the question this writer has to ask about whistleblowers: Where are they at the CDC and FDA?

Probably the most comprehensive overview of the criminality factor within Big Pharma is found in the Health Ranger, Mike Adams’s 2012 article “Big Pharma Criminality in Vaccines,” but still nothing changes!

This writer has come to a sad conclusion that nothing probably ever will change because pharmaceutical criminality truly IS cost effective behavior as far as the U.S. federal government is concerned—just pay the fines.

Now that everyone ought to realize what’s apparently going on, the obvious solution to the problem seemingly lies with consumers who must re-educate themselves away from believing all the advertising bunk that’s been bullied into them by TV ads, public service announcements, and even the family doctor, who should know better.

Family physicians should be the very ones to stand up, blow the whistle and say this is not correct, as Dr. Oz did in his recent TV show regarding heavy metals found in organic foods that he has recommended to his patients. Applause, applause, applause!

Dr. Oz’s oft-repeated question during that show was to ask why FDA didn’t find what Mike Adams and his Forensic Food Lab found. This writer ventures to say that FDA really doesn’t give a hoot, especially when it can go after ‘big fish’ money from Big Pharma – something like an annuity – as long as the U.S. consumer buys into the ‘legal illegal’ activities that are carried out in the name of pharmaceutical science, which Big Pharma apparently gets away with.

Notes: 

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikakelton/2012/09/11/big-pharmas-offshore-fraud-strategy/
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikakelton/2013/07/29/is-big-pharma-addicted-to-fraud/
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/auction-2012-drug-companies-lobby_n_1245543.html

Resources:  

The New York Times / Glaxo Agrees to Pay $3 Billion in Fraud Settlement
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/business/glaxosmithkline-agrees-to-pay-3-billion-in-fraud-settlement.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Natural News launches Labs reference website with heavy metals results for foods, organics, supplements and more
http://www.naturalnews.com/043422_heavy_metals_lab_tests_organic_foods.html

Unacceptable Levels / A film about 80,000 chemicals in products on the market
http://www.yekra.com/unacceptable-levels/#!/deployment_code=24408257n5aopv

Patent Landscape Report on Vaccines for Selected Infectious Diseases, November 2011
http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/patents/946/wipo_pub_946_3.pdf

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008).