More bad pharma behavior at home and abroad

An executive at Valeant, a major pharmaceutical company, and the head of a mail order pharmacy called Philidor RxServices have been secretly enriching each other: the Valeant guy steered his company’s products through Philidor and Philidor altered prescriptions such that Valeant’s brand name drugs were dispensed instead of a cheaper generic drug. What’s more, at least 90 percent of the drugs Philidor dispensed were those sold by Valeant. The Valeant guy got about $30 million from this maneuver. He gave $10 million to the Philidor guy. Of course, it was more complex than this, but this outline is true.

Meanwhile, in China, GlaxoSmithKline, another big pharma company, was nailed for fraud and bribery. The company has been charged with giving kickbacks to doctors and hospital workers who prescribed its medicines. It was also pitching drugs for unapproved uses and bribing regulators with money and gifts. In one scheme, Glaxo funneled cash through a network of 700 travel agencies and consulting firms to bribe doctors and workers at government-owned hospitals. By the way, both Eli Lily and Pfizer have also been bribing doctors in China. In the past China had been looking the other way. Now it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy.

I regularly scan the business pages of The New York Times just to see what’s going on. The above two stories are recent. But stories like these involving big pharma appear on a regular basis. So I ask myself, are drug companies worse than others from an ethical/moral standpoint? It seems that they are. I don’t know the reason for this unless it’s that the culture of drug companies is one of greed and deceit.

I hope you don’t depend on life-saving drugs. It’s nice to just say no.

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