Pfizer pleads guilty to felony crime in fraudulent marketing of Bextra, pays billions in fines
For the last several years, I’ve referred to drug companies as “criminal” operations. They have engaged in price fixing, marketing fraud, science fraud and many other criminal activities that we’ve written about here on NaturalNews. And yet, until today, they always managed to avoid the criminal charges by settling with the government for a few million dollars in payouts. This was their racket: Violate the law, then when you get caught, just settle with some cash. (And there’s always some spare cash to go around since fraudulent science and fraudulent marketing is very, very lucrative.)
But all that changed today with the announcement of a Dept. of Justice criminal case that has resulted in Pfizer pleading guilty to a felony crime. Which crime? “…for misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead.” You can read the DOJ documents describing the settlement here: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/Se…
Essentially, Pfizer asked the FDA to approve Bextra for a variety of diseases and conditions, and when the FDA refused those approvals, Pfizer decided to go ahead and market the drugs for those diseases and conditions anyway (off-label marketing).
But that’s not all. In the DOJ statement, you’ll read the following:
Harold
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