First we had THOMAS FARINA, a former district sales manager at Pfizer, who was found guilty of obstruction of justice. He faces up to 20 years imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release and a $ 250,000 fine.
Then there was MARY HOLLOWAY, a Regional Sales Manager at Pfizer, who plead guilty to a one count Information charging her with distribution of a misbranded drug. She faces up to six months’ imprisonment, to be followed by not more than 3 years of supervised release and a maximum fine of $100,000 or twice the amount of gross loss or gross gain.
Now the guessing game is on inside Pfizer about which executive is next.
Mary Holloway, according to messages on CafePharma reported to a Pfizer VP Sales, who according to other messages on CafePharma very, very recently suddenly left Pfizer.
And other people who were responsible for the Bextra launch apparently also recently disappeared from Pfizer. According to yet more messages on CafePharma.
4 comments:
Mary H. might be the key protagonist but she is not the only one. In fact she could not possibly have the authority to go ahead and do such elaborate offlabel promotion. This is authorised by the very top of this and any other big pharma Co. However, just like in the regular organized crime/mafia in Corp. Org. Crime there are proper and unprovable buffers between those who give the orders and those who carry them out. This is a perfect example. Mary is in the public's eye and she is taking the "blame" as much as blame can be put on these artists of OCC.
Hopefully the law will go trough with jail sentances etc. to finally make example of these lawbrakers. In today's climate when people are just going mad over what has been done to our economy and people's lives by the OCC and their schemes.This should be a must by the authorities. Show some guts and just do it by using the current laws.
Mafia: the "soldier" does the job as an "earner" on orders from the godfather but with all kinds of buffers between them. He steals, cheats, extorts, whacks etc. One day he gets cought, pleads guilty, takes the wrap, goes to jail but never talks. Omerta. While in jail his family looks after his family, get it?
Pfizer: Mary and Thomas do their stuff under the orders from the top bosses with proper and unprovable buffers between them. They promote offlabel, bribe docs, make false claims, do all kinds of illegal stuff and one day they get cught. They plead guilty, Co pays the fines they may end up in jail. If they do, they take the wrap and while in jail the Co may not look after them and family but the bonuses they got while it lasted and severeance pay will do just fine. They never talk beyond their own guilt, keep quiet about those who gave the orders. Omerta.
Two sides of the same coin.
ps: do you know what Eleventh Commendment is? DON'T GET CAUGHT. That is the commendment all OCC uses. They figure Moses just forgot to carve it onto the tablet.Mary and Thomas just did not follow the 11Th Commendment 100% so they'll pay the price while the true power behind it stays free to do it again and again and.....They have a whole army of soldiers/earners to take the wrap. What a biz.
One other point is regarding accountability within Pfizer. The company just paid the largest penalty ($2.3b) and I'm sure many people in the promotional area were impacted. But did Pfizer fire anyone in its compliance department that is supposed to monitor these things on an on-going basis? Pfizer still has the same chief compliance officer since the days of the last big settlement (Neurontin). Shouldn't their internal monitoring programs have caught something like this much earlier before things ballooned to a $2.3 bn level fraud? What % of internal audits within Pfizer end with a 'satisfactory' or better rating? Why are there so many audit and compliance groups within Pfizer? Why don't different areas of compliance (promotion, regulatory etc) all report into one compliance organization so that a more holistic approach to compliance can be adopted? If sales people can have a sales target, why doesn't the compliance group have a target like < $15m in fines a year? It will never be possible to stop some rogue employee from doing something wrong but it also appears that Pfizer's internal compliance operations could be vastly improved to reduce the odds of such incidents.
Wait a darn minute, here! I was a physician who spoke for Pfizer on Bextra. Ever since my involvement, their attorneys hammered . . . and I mean HAMMERED, into us speakers to only speak on label. I never saw all this off label stuff. Where was this happening?
Post a Comment