Dear Readers,
 |
Pfizer Chairman and
CEO Albert Bourla |
Have
you had your Covid Pfizer jab yet? Well I have but nobody told me what a
shocking record this multinational US pharmaceutical company has for
dishonesty on a massive scale.
This
is how Pfizer’s shameful behaviour since 2002 is described: “Pfizer has been a ‘habitual
offender,’ persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices,
bribing physicians (to prescribe their products) and suppressing adverse trial
results. The company and its subsidiaries have been assessed $3 billion in
criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards.”
In 2009 its crimes had its subsidiary Pharmacia &
Upjohn pleading guilty to violating the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) for
misbranding the anti-inflammatory drug Bextra
with the intent to defraud. It promoted this for several uses that had not been
approved by the FDCA for safety reasons and eventually took it off the market in
2005.
For this Pharmacia and Upjohn had to pay $1.195 billion,
which was the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the US for any
case.
In addition Pfizer agreed to pay
another billion dollars to settle allegations under the civil False Claims Act
that it illegally promoted four drugs - Bextra,
an anti-inflammatory; Geodon, an anti-psychotic; Zyvox, an antibiotic and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug – to cause false claims to be made to
government health care programmes when there use was not recommended and
therefore not covered by the programmes.
The civil side of the settlement involved Pfizer paying
kickbacks to health care providers to prescribe these and other drugs and it
set another record. It was the largest civil fraud settlement ever against a
pharmaceutical company.
Pfizer is evidently a very slow learner, either that or it
makes so much money from its crooked business that these huge fines are no
deterent. In 2004 it was stung for $430-million for promoting drugs not yet
approved by the regulatory authority.
In spite of Pfizer deplorable history its
Covid vaccine was approval by the US’s
Food and Drug Administration for emergency use last
December. Since then there has been a lot of confusion as to whether or not it has become the first product of its kind to get the full approval of this regulatory agency.
 |
| This tells a story on its own. Does he know something we shouldn't know? |
Johnson and Johnson another Covid vaccine maker is also
right up there in the crooked American Big Pharma league. People around the
world are also being jabbed with their vaccine.
In 2013 it was stung by the authorities for a mere $2.2
billion for promoting drugs not yet approved and paying kickbacks to doctors.
Its morality is such that it knew for years that its famous
baby powder was contaminated with asbestos, but did nothing about it because
the alternative was more expensive. The
result: The Supreme Court in America
has told J & J to pay heavily for
its greed. It rejected the company’s
appeal against an award of $2.1 billion in damages because its powder products caused women ovarian cancer.
Thousands were affected.
In spite of this the 1945 store Pick n Pay supermarket
group is one company in South
Africa that has not taken this J & J brand
of baby powder off its shelves.
Then there is the British-Swedish multinational AstraZeneca that is also on the dirty deeds list - twice. In 2003 it was fined $355 million for Medicare fraud and in 2010 its dishonesty was in the spotlight again when it had to pay $520 million for giving kickbacks to doctors and promoting drugs not yet approved by the necessary authority. It's difficult to under stand why Oxford University was prepared to tarnish its own name by getting into bed with these crooks to produce the Oxford AstraZeneca Covid vaccine.
Regards
Jon, a Consumer Watchdog with an eye very
much on BIG BUSINESS.
P.S. These huge fines do nothing to change
the morality of multi-national drug companies operating in America that are corrupting the whole medical
system, not only in the USA
but around the world. Paying kickbacks to doctors to use a company’s drugs not
only leads to unnecessary treatment but can endanger lives. That’s just one
aspect of this deplorable behaviour. Dishonesty certainly pays it seems if Wikipedia’s
list of US fines for Big Pharma’s dirty deeds are anything to go by. It goes
from 2001 to 2013 and ranks them by the amounts they had to pay. It’s not clear
whether they changed their ways after 2013, but I doubt it especially as
several companies showed no sign of reforming by appearing twice years apart.
Britain’s
GlaxoSmithKleine had the dubious distinction of topping the list for its $3 billion
fine, or ‘settlement’ as the Yanks tactfully like to call them, in 2012. It’s
crimes were things like ‘failing to disclose safety data’ and paying ‘kickbacks’
to doctors to get them to use its medication. Nothing really dishonest you understand. It was listed earlier at
No 8 for having to pay $750 million for ‘poor manufacturing practices’. Is this really important when you are making
something to heal people? I don’t want to leave a bad taste in your mouth but
you might know of GMK as the makers of Aquafresh toothpaste.
Not to be outdone there was Pfizer at No
2 and No 17 with Johnson and Johnson a close third. Then there were Merck,
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Schering-Plough all listed for Medicare
fraud and in some cases giving kickbacks as well.
When are the Yanks going to wake up and start sending the heads of these crooked firms to jail as fines don't change the behavior of many of them at all?
So if you are getting any kind
of treatment that involves medication made by any of these companies (you can Google
the full list) on this list of shame my medical advice to you is to ask your
doctor for an alternative. How can anybody
possibly rely on crooks to keep them
alive?
