Big Pharma’s Corporate Crimes and Fines: How Can They Get Away With It?

by Catherine J. Frompovich

For all those who, in euphemistic terms, “drink the cool aide,” there seems to be an indication that either they truly believe what’s perpetrated upon them as pharmaceutical medical science or they are downright lost in fear and ignorance. That assessment includes brainwashed medical doctors and healthcare practitioners, who ought to know better, and “cease and desist” from taking Big Pharma’s gratuities to push, hawk, or pimp Pharma’s products – or else be subject to peer pressure and professional condemnation.

Big Pharma, as an industry, probably is one of the most sinister of criminals! That’s quite a statement to make, but legal documents prove it. In 2012, the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, issued and published the paper “Corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry is common, serious and repetitive,” which was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2012;345:e8462—short version).

That paper was authored by Peter C. Gotzsche, Professor, MD, DrMedSc, MSc.

Professor Gotzsche researched to see if drug companies routinely break the law. Here’s what he found:

Results: I found recent examples (2007 to 2012) of serious crimes committed by each company. The crimes included marketing drugs for off-label uses, misrepresentation of research results, hiding data on harms, and Medicaid and Medicare fraud. Doctors were often complicit in the crimes, as kickbacks were common. The crimes were repetitive.

Conclusions: The crimes persist because crime pays. Harder sanctions are therefore needed, including prison sentences for CEOs and other senior executives. Doctors and their organisations should consider carefully whether they find it ethically acceptable to receive money that may have been partly been earned by crimes that are harmful to patients. [1] [Emphasis added]

This writer thinks that better, independent REAL science should persist with independent data, not Big Pharma’s manipulated and controlled information released.

Dr. Gotzsche selected 10 cases from 2007 to 2012, which were all related to the United States of America. In his words,

The most common criminal offences were illegal marketing recommending drugs for non-approved (off-label) uses, misrepresentation of research results, hiding data on harms, and Medicaid and Medicare fraud. [Emphasis added]

This writer would be willing to “discount” illegal marketing practices and Medicaid and Medicare fraud as “part of doing business,” but to misrepresent research results and hide data on harms—that’s truly criminal, immoral, and pseudoscience!

Taking the above findings a step further, why, then, would healthcare consumers and parents, in particular, subject their children to the cult-like propaganda that vaccines are safe? Since drug companies have been found to misrepresent research results and hide data on harms.

Question: Where are the U.S. Congress, the CDC and FDA, and why aren’t they doing their jobs to protect public health? Answer: In the back pocket of Big Pharma’s lobbyists! Big Pharma has 1,100+ paid lobbyists, and from 1998 to 2013 spent $2.7 BILLION on lobbying expenses! [2]

In order to keep this article from becoming lengthy, may I suggest you study reference 1 below for particulars. However, I will enumerate the 10 USA Pharma criminals:

1. Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion in 2009
2. Novartis agreed to pay $423 million in 2010
3. Sanofi-Aventis to pay more than $95 million to settle fraud charge in 2009
4. GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3 billion in 2011
5. AstraZeneca to pay $520 million in 2010 to settle fraud case15
6. Roche convinces governments to stockpile Tamiflu
7. Johnson & Johnson fined more than $1.1 billion in 2012
8. Merck to pay $670 million over Medicaid fraud in 2007
9. Eli Lilly to pay more than $1.4 billion for illegal marketing in 2009
10. Abbott to pay $1.5 billion for Medicaid fraud in 2012

 [1] Emphasis added]

According to the Gotzsche article,

A US poll also ranked the drug industry at the bottom, together with oil and tobacco companies.

And yet, healthcare consumers in the USA are forced under totalitarian-like laws, physician pressures, and media misinformation to submit to fraudulent or criminal science or marketing practices!

Regarding the role that doctors apparently play as co-conspirators in Big Pharma health crimes,

Dr. Gotzsche contends,

Doctors are complicit in the crimes when they accept kickbacks and engage in other types of corruption, often in relation to illegal marketing. When drugs are marketed to non- approved uses, we don’t know whether they are effective, and they could also be more harmful, e.g. if used in children. This practice has therefore been described as using the citizens as guinea pigs on a large scale without their informed consent.

Even when doctors use drugs only for approved indications, the crimes have consequences for the patients. Doctors only have access to selected and manipulated information, and they therefore believe drugs are far more effective and safe than they really are. Thus, both legal and illegal marketing leads massive overtreatment of the population and a lot of harm that could have been avoided. [Emphasis added

[Vaccine pseudoscience falls into the above belief system for doctors, in this writer’s opinion.]

As many of the crimes I identified were related to psychiatry, I shall use this specialty as an example. Psychiatry is a lucrative area for the industry, as most definitions of psychiatric disorders are vague and easy to manipulate. [1] [Emphasis added]

According to the American Psychological Association,

The use of psychotropic drugs by adult Americans increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2010, with one in five adults now taking at least one psychotropic medication, according to industry data. In 2010, Americans spent more than $16 billion on antipsychotics, $11 billion on antidepressants and $7 billion for drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The rapid growth of all three classes of drugs has alarmed some mental health professionals, who are concerned about the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs by elderly nursing home residents and the prescription of stimulants to children who may have been misdiagnosed with ADHD. [3] [Emphasis added]

The same cockamamie BS can be applied to vaccines at all levels: federal, state, and local authorities who apparently drink and thrive on the “cool aide” that vaccines are safe, when most have not been proven to not cause cancer, reproductive health problems, etc., and which is stated on all vaccine package inserts!

However, the piece de resistance, in my opinion, are these profound words from Dr. Gotzsche:

Doctors and their organisations should consider carefully whether they find it ethically acceptable to receive money that may have been partly earned by crimes that have harmed those people whose interests doctors are expected to take care of. Many crimes would be impossible to carry out, if doctors weren’t willing to participate in them. [1] [Emphasis added]

The most lucrative part of the ‘medical crime syndicate’, in my opinion, is vaccines! which every medical professional pushes almost like a crack dealer.

According to Health Impact News, “Doctors Earn $3.5 Billion in Kickbacks from Pharmaceutical Companies.” What does that tell you as to why you and parents are being forced by pseudoscience and “cool aide” science drinkers to submit to vaccinations? It’s a legal racket condoned by law, the HHS, CDC and FDA. Now you know. So, what will you do?

One study that would prove the controversial science surrounding vaccines is a retrospective study of the health status of vaccinated children of all ages versus non-vaccinated children of all ages. Congress, please commission that.

Why, after all these years of contention about parents not wanting to vaccinate, wouldn’t medical science, Big Pharma, and government health agencies want to set the record scientifically straight? Why do they just pontificate, “Vaccines are safe?” That’s not been proven, and each vaccine product insert says so! Check it out by asking your medical doctor for that piece of paper and read it thoroughly. I challenge all vaccine apologists to do that.  

References:

[1] British Medical Journal (BMJ 2012;345:e8462) http://www.cochrane.dk/research/corporatecrime/Corporate-crime-long-version.pdf
[2] http://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturer/
[3] http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/prescribing.aspx

Catherine retired from researching and writing, but felt compelled to write this article. 

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)