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Thursday 7 February 2013

More About Drug Industry Lawlessness !

During a December panel discussion at the Washington, D.C.-based Food and Drug Law Institute, a nonprofit organization providing an ongoing forum for discussing legal issues involving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the drug industry, the growing epidemic of criminal and civil legal violations by the pharmaceutical industry was a hot topic.

Eric Blumberg, deputy chief counsel for litigation at the FDA, pulled no punches. Commenting on the growing, billions-per-year monetary fraud settlements by the drug industry, he stated: “Money is clearly not doing the job; qui tam (whistleblower) complaints are still falling across my desk like snowflakes! We need to employ a ‘bigger hammer,’ to send people to jail.

The seemingly never-ending, record-breaking succession of billion-dollar fines against this industry argues instead, in my view, that industry does see these penalties as merely “the cost of doing business.” This is yet another reason for the quite out-of-control prices of prescription drugs. 

More here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

On a similar topic, I wonder if the FDA will ever get around to explaining their own conflict of interest/revolving-door policy of exchanging executives with Monsanto?

Best,
Indy

tess said...

oooh -- what Indy said!!!

Anonymous said...

It seems to me there is corruption everywhere you look.

Anne

Anonymous said...

I do agree with the statement that the drug companies now include the cost of their fines as part of their regular business, sad but true I think.

The unfortunate fact is that although a lot of drugs out there are very necessary and do a good job to improve the life of many there are also some that do far more harm. How do we the ordinary man or woman balance this up and are confident that what is being prescribed is safe and not causing more harm?

I guess the answer is we trust our GP's to prescribe the correct medicine ???

Kay

Steve P said...

Law, what is law?
Pharmaceutical, Politicians and in recent days our food industry. They make up their own law as they go along.