Norman Doidge: Needle Points

Tablet, Oct.27, 2021

Chapter One

Chapter Two

In 2012, physician Ben Goldacre of Oxford University published Bad Pharma, in which he explored fraud settlements for pharmaceutical companies covering up known adverse events, including lethal ones, and hiding information, including about safety. The book’s subtitle—How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients—was key: Physicians often didn’t know the wool was being pulled over their eyes, or what had been kept from them. But when the practices of large pharmaceutical companies were examined in the courts, with internal documents reviewed, one illegal activity after another was revealed. Goldacre’s list makes one shudder:

• “Pfizer was fined $2.3 billion for promoting the painkiller Bextra, later taken off the market over safety concerns, at dangerously high doses (misbranding it with ‘the intent to defraud or mislead’) … the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the US, until it was beaten by GSK [GlaxoSmithKline].” [...]
• “In July 2012, GSK received a $3 billion fine for civil and criminal fraud, after pleading guilty to a vast range of charges around unlawful promotion of prescription drugs, and failure to report safety data.” [...]
• “Abbot was fined $1.5 billion in May 2012, over the illegal promotion of Depakote.” [...]
• “Eli Lilly was fined $1.4 billion in 2009.” [...]
• “AstraZeneca was fined $520 million in 2010.” [...]
• “Merck was fined $1 billion in 2011.”

After Goldacre’s book was published, the fines kept coming. Johnson & Johnson was made to pay $2.2 billion in 2013, which included, according to the Justice Department, “criminal fines” for having “jeopardized the health and safety of patients and damaged the public trust”; in 2019, the company was fined another $572 million for its role in the opioid epidemic, and then fined a whopping $8 billion by a jury in a different case—an amount that will no doubt be reduced, but which signals public outrage at the violations.

Chapter Three

Chapter Four