More reasons to be skeptical about drugs

The British Medical Association awarded Dr. Peter C. Gøtzsche first prize in the “basis of health care” category for his book, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare. Among other things in this book, he enumerates the corrupt practices of pharmaceutical companies. Here’s a chart that summarizes the type of behaviors for which the companies were required to pay fines.

Company	Year	Fines (million dollars)	Type of wrong doing
Abbott	2003	622	Illegal marketing
	2012	1500	Fraud; Illegal marketing; bribery
AstraZeneca	2003	355	Fraud
	2010	520	Illegal marketing; bribery
Bristol-Myers Squibb	2003	670	Fraud
	2007	515	Illegal marketing; bribery
Eli-Lilly	2009	1400	Illegal marketing; fraud
Glaxo-SmithKline	2004	175	Blocking of marketing
	2006	3100	Corruption
	2009	750	Fraud
	2011	3000	Illegal marketing; fraud
Johnson & Johnson	2012	1100	Illegal marketing
Lundbeck	2013	126	Violation of the Cartel Law
Merck	2007	670	Bribery of doctors and hospitals; fraud
Novartis	2010	423	Illegal marketing
Pfizer	2009	2300	Fraudulent marketing
Purdue Pharmacy	2007	635	Lies about their drugs
Schering-Plough	2004	346	Kickbacks
Serono Lab	2006	740	Corruption
Tap Pharmaceuticals (Abbott)	2001	875	Fraud

To corroborate, an outfit called Access to Medicine Index, which independently ranks pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to improve access to medicine in developing countries, states, “18 out of 20 companies were the subject of settlements or fines for corrupt behaviour, unethical marketing or breaches of competition law. Collectively, companies were found to have been accountable for almost 100 separate breaches...The majority of these (89%) concerned improper marketing, bribery and corruption."

OK. I’ll let this drug business go. I have barely touched the subject, but you get the idea.

Next week: Think twice before getting scans and x-rays

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.