Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12650

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Hensley S.
Federal Grand Jury Probes Biovail Over Cardizem LA
The Wall Street Journal 2008 Feb 1
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/02/01/federal-grand-jury-probes-biovail-over-cardizem-la/

Full text:

The feds are busy in Boston. Canadian specialty drugmaker Biovail got the notice that nobody wants to receive: The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston would like to inform you that you’re the target of a federal grand jury investigation. (Merck’s in the same boat, the WSJ says.)

The Biovail probe concerns the company’s controversial launch of blood pressure medicine Cardizem LA in 2003, Dow Jones Newswires reports. Biovail was eager to get doctors to try the once-a-day blood pressure pill through a program called P.L.A.C.E., or Proving L.A. through Clinical Experience.

But as the WSJ reported in 2003, Biovail was so eager it payed “as much as $1,000 each to thousands of doctors” and even forked over as much as $150 to office managers to get patients on board with Cardizem LA. A Biovail spokesman defended the program then, saying the effort was intended to “generate physician survey data, with respect to Cardizem LA, that will be published.”

Biovail said the Boston investigation could lead to civil or criminal charges. The company was invited to give its side of the story to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and intends to do so “as soon as practicable,” the Biovail statement says.