Same old duet: drug companies and psychiatry

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Carolyn Thomas

Here’s more this month from investigative journalist Alison Bass, author of the book Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and A Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial:

“The same drug giants paying millions of dollars to settle claims that they engaged in illegal and improper marketing of anti-psychotic drugs in the U.S. are even now looking for new worlds to conquer. Consider the study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. It surveyed more than 60,000 adults in 11 countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America and concludes that the treatment needs for people with bipolar disorder are “often unmet, particularly in low-income countries.”

“That may indeed be true. But I’d find this result a lot more believable if the study were not funded in large part by the same pharmaceutical companies who make the atypical anti-psychotics used to treat bipolar disorder: Eli Lilly (which makes Zyprexa), Janssen (the unit of Johnson & Johnson that brought us Risperdal), Pfizer (Geodon), Bristol Myers Squibb (Abilify), GlaxoSmithKline (Lamictal), and Novartis (Fanapt). Continue reading →

Sock puppetry, astroturfing, and the marketing ‘shill’ game

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Carolyn Thomas

The American plastic surgery company called Lifestyle Lift allegedly ordered employees in 32 centres to post fake positive reviews online about their $5,000 quickie facelift procedure. But last summer, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stepped in, investigated the company for fraud, and ordered Lifestyle Lift to pay $300,000 in penalties (roughly equivalent to lunch money for the cosmetic surgeons).

The attorney general’s office said the case is believed to be the first in the U.S. addressing a form of ‘stealth marketing’ called astroturfing.

Astroturfing refers to political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization or company, but designed to mask their true origins to create the impression of being spontaneous, popular “grassroots” behaviour. (The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass). Astroturfing campaigns are widely considered by us PR types to be behind the growing trend towards noisy health care protests, town hall meetings, and the anti-plastic bag ban movement in the U.S.

William Greider’s 1992 book, Who Will Tell the People, described a typical astroturf campaign run by Bonner & Associates in this way:

“It was a ‘boiler room’ operation with 300 phone lines and a sophisticated computer system, resembling the phone banks employed in election campaigns. Articulate young people sit in little booths every day, dialing around the country on a variety of public issues, searching for ‘white hat’ citizens who can be persuaded to endorse the political objectives of Mobil Oil, Dow Chemical, Miller Brewing, United States Tobacco Company, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association and dozens of other clients.”

In online astroturfing, employees like those at Lifestyle Lift pose as independent consumers to post positive web reviews about their own company.

Cuomo’s office said these phoney reviews

“ …constitute deceptive commercial practices, false advertising and fraudulent and illegal conduct under New York and federal consumer protection law.”

Besides the cash penalty, Lifestyle Lift was ordered to stop publishing anonymous positive reviews online.

An astonishingly stupid press release issued by the company responded:

“Lifestyle Lift regrets that earlier third-party website content did not always properly reflect and acknowledge patient comments, or always admit the content was by Lifestyle Lift.”

I don’t know about you, but I do not think I would want my cosmetic surgery performed by somebody who is astonishingly stupid. Continue reading →

A mere $2.3 billion later…

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Carolyn Thomas

J0211960262 As one who has written countless press releases during the decades I worked in public relations, I just love picking through other people’s press releases now. I can smell a spin a mile away, and I’m always curious about translating the spin back into The Truth when corporations attempt to communicate with the media.

That’s why I laughed right out loud (giving Lily the Lap-Napping Cat a severe fright) when I read Pfizer Inc.’s recent press release about their rosy future ahead partnered with their new BFF, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Buried in the depths of this rambling release (and didn’t their Communications staff learn in PR school to keep these bloody things to one page max?) is the news that Pfizer has just formed something called an “Executive Compliance Committee”.

Let’s explore what this means. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug company, has been in the news lately because of what investigative journalist Ed Silverman on his always-intriguing Pharmalot website describes in this fashion:

“This innovative notion comes hard on the news that Pfizer paid a record-setting, ground-breaking, chair-swiveling, eye-rolling, jaw-dropping, $2.3 billion fine for illegally marketing several drugs, including Bextra, Zyvox, Geodon and Lyrica, over several years – even as other corporate integrity agreements were already in force.”

Continue reading →

Pfizer paid for doc’s helicopter speaking tour to push ‘off-label’ drugs

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Carolyn Thomas

Pfizer Inc., the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, paid an American physician $4,000 a day to promote the anti-psychotic drug Geodon, and expensed his use of a private helicopter to get him to speaking events that the company booked for him, according to a whistleblower lawsuit. The suit was one of several that led to a recent record-breaking $2.3 billion judgement against Pfizer to settle allegations made in multiple whistleblower lawsuits that the pharmaceutical giant defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and other government-funded health care programs in connection with its market practices for four of its drugs.

The settlement is the largest whistleblower, or qui tam, settlement in U.S. history. Pfizer agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct and to pay $2.3 billion in criminal and civil fines.

Mark Westlock of Missouri was a sales rep for Pfizer from 1991 to 2007. He alleges that Pfizer paid psychiatrist Dr. Neil Kaye $4,000 daily speaker fees to talk to other doctors about “the off-label use of Geodon in adolescents,” among other issues.

Now, if I were Dr. Kaye, I’d now be some mad, as Newfoundlanders like to say here, because he no doubt was unaware that competing drug giant Eli Lilly was generously paying its own stable of hired docs up to $50,000 per speech, according to reports about 60 doctors on Lilly’s payroll, revealed last month in the Boston Globe. Continue reading →