Continuing SOYMB exposure of Big Pharma, we read that the global pharmaceutical industry has racked up fines of more than $11bn in the past three years for criminal wrongdoing, including withholding safety data and promoting drugs for use beyond their licensed conditions. 26 companies, including eight of the 10 top players in the global industry, have been found to be acting dishonestly.
The largest fine of $3bn, imposed on the UK-based company GlaxoSmith-Kline in July after it admitted three counts of criminal behaviour in the US courts, was the largest ever. But GSK is not alone – nine other companies have had fines imposed, ranging from $420m on Novartis to $2.3bn on Pfizer since 2009. The $3bn fine on GSK represents 10.8 per cent of its revenue while the $1.5bn fine imposed on Abbott Laboratories, for promoting a drug (Depakote) with inadequate evidence of its effectiveness, amounted to 12 per cent. Kevin Outterson, a lawyer at Boston University, says that despite the eye watering size of the fines they amount to a small proportion of the companies' total revenues and may be regarded as a "cost of doing business...Companies might well view such fines as a quite small percentage of their global revenue." He argues that penalties should also be imposed on executives rather than the company as whole. GSK had committed a $1bn crime and "no individual has been held responsible".
Trust in the industry among doctors has fallen so low that they dismiss clinical trials funded by it, even when the trials have been conducted with scientific rigour, according to a second paper in the journal by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. This could have serious implications because most medical research is funded by the drug industry and "if physicians are reluctant to trust all such research, it could hinder the translation of … research into practice," said Aaron Kesselheim, who led the study.
The Independent reported that the world's leading drug companies are giving up on the search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease, following a series of failed drug trials, scaling back their neuroscience departments and focusing on symptomatic, rather than disease-modifying, treatments.
The largest fine of $3bn, imposed on the UK-based company GlaxoSmith-Kline in July after it admitted three counts of criminal behaviour in the US courts, was the largest ever. But GSK is not alone – nine other companies have had fines imposed, ranging from $420m on Novartis to $2.3bn on Pfizer since 2009. The $3bn fine on GSK represents 10.8 per cent of its revenue while the $1.5bn fine imposed on Abbott Laboratories, for promoting a drug (Depakote) with inadequate evidence of its effectiveness, amounted to 12 per cent. Kevin Outterson, a lawyer at Boston University, says that despite the eye watering size of the fines they amount to a small proportion of the companies' total revenues and may be regarded as a "cost of doing business...Companies might well view such fines as a quite small percentage of their global revenue." He argues that penalties should also be imposed on executives rather than the company as whole. GSK had committed a $1bn crime and "no individual has been held responsible".
Trust in the industry among doctors has fallen so low that they dismiss clinical trials funded by it, even when the trials have been conducted with scientific rigour, according to a second paper in the journal by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. This could have serious implications because most medical research is funded by the drug industry and "if physicians are reluctant to trust all such research, it could hinder the translation of … research into practice," said Aaron Kesselheim, who led the study.
The Independent reported that the world's leading drug companies are giving up on the search for a cure for Alzheimer's disease, following a series of failed drug trials, scaling back their neuroscience departments and focusing on symptomatic, rather than disease-modifying, treatments.
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