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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18439

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

Massey M
Blue Cross of Texas sues Pfizer over off-label marketing of Lyrica
East Texas Bureau 2010 July 13
http://www.setexasrecord.com/news/228164-blue-cross-of-texas-sues-pfizer-over-off-label-marketing-of-lyrica


Full text:

Alleging deceptive marketing practices and falsely inflating demand, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of three popular medications.

Health Care Service Corp., a mutual legal reserve company, filed suit against Pfizer, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Efren Olivares and Rick Burch on July 2 in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas is a division of Health Care Service Corp. and is accusing the drug manufacturers of illegal marketing and deceptive sales practices.

The drugs in question are Zyvox, a synthetic antibacterial agent; Geodon an anti-psychotic drug; and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug. The suit alleges Pfizer heavily marketed the drugs for use in off-label conditions.

“Defendants’ deceptive marketing practices and other improper conduct violated federal and state law and caused health plans to reimburse for prescriptions that Defendants knew had not been approved by the FDA,” the lawsuit states.

“Defendants’ improper conduct caused HCSC to pay for an inflated number of participants’ prescriptions, and other related health costs, for Geodon, Lyrica, and Zyvox as well as other associated health costs.”

Defendant Efren Olivares was the national head of Geodon marketing. Defendant Rick Burch was a senior vice president at Pfizer who led the Arthritis, Pain and Metabolics Division.

Defendant Pharmacia & Upjohn was purchased by Pfizer in 2003.

HCSC accuses the defendants of racketeering, employing deceptive marketing strategies including off-label marketing, dissemination of misleading information regarding the respective drug’s safety and efficacy and payment of illegal kickbacks to health care professionals to induce them to promote and prescribe these drugs.

The plaintiff accuses the defendants of violating the Illinois Consumer Protection Act, unjust enrichment, common law fraud, negligence and negligence per se and conspiracy.

HCSC is seeking compensatory, punitive and treble damages, damages for unjust enrichment, interest, costs and expenses, and attorney’s fees.

Dallas attorneys John B. Scott and Andrew W. Yung of Scott Yung LLP is representing the plaintiff.

U.S. District Judge David Folsom is assigned to the case.

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909