Bribery, Fraud and Corruption Charges Against Big Pharma
Bribery, Fraud and Corruption Charges Against Big Pharma
NaturalBlaze.com
May 18th, 2014
By Catherine J. Frompovich
What happens when the ‘Average Joe’ gets caught committing a crime? He or she usually gets the book thrown at them, most often spending time in the slammer. However, what happens when “corporations too big to fail” get caught with “their hands in the cookie jar,” so to speak? Not very many folks pay the time, but the corporate treasury pays the fine. Why? Apparently, large sums of money can “absolve corporate sins” time after time after time. One industry that has had enormous fines levied against it is the pharmaceutical industry, also known as Big Pharma.
It is the opinion of this writer that Big Pharma’s corporate largess is too tempting to resist by federal government agencies, and fines work nicely. Pharma’s lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year contributing to congressional campaign coffers, which should be outlawed because it is nothing short of bribery—plain and simple. Obviously, a member of Congress will champion a cause – or is ‘morally’ obligated to do so – for the money Pharma’s lobbyists freely hand out. [3]
That being said, let’s change gears and consider only a fraction of apparent crimes and misdemeanors Big Pharma and/or its personnel allegedly have perpetrated. Some have resulted in fines while others – if not many – slid under the wire or evaded the radar screen. One in that particular category, which comes to mind, is the inclusion of the SV-40 cancer-causing virus in the polio vaccine until about the early 1970s.
Here and
here are two articles about viruses in vaccines, which should have been prosecuted under the category “crimes against humanity.” How come? Well, when federal and state health agencies mandate that children be given vaccines that undoubtedly are not safe nor proven to
not contain viruses or mycoplasma that cause diseases down the line, then both Big Pharma and government agency personnel ought to be prosecuted, in my opinion. Maybe we’d have ‘safer’ vaccines?
Another equally questionable and seemingly non-prosecutable crime to date is the apparent research fraud perpetrated by Dr. Poul Thorsen, whom the U.S. CDC apparently ‘cannot find’ to prosecute regarding “fraud and embezzlement and the Danish vaccine-autism studies.” Here are a few articles that lay out that serious fraud, which the CDC apparently still stands behind and accepts Thorsen’s findings—ouch!
Central Figure in CDC Vaccine Cover-Up Absconds with $2M
The curious case of Poul Thorsen, fraud and embezzlement, and the Danish vaccine-autism studies
The Dangerous “EXPERTS” You Should Never Believe…
Back in September of 2012, Forbes published the article “Big Pharma’s Offshore Fraud Strategy” [1] wherein this appears in the very first paragraph:
"…not to mention billion dollar liabilities for fraudulent marketing practices in the U.S."
So, how can U.S. patients, i.e., healthcare consumers, trust or believe in all the pharmaceuticals their physicians so freely prescribe, apparently at the behest of Pharma representatives? Ever go to a doctor’s office and see a Pharma rep with his/her suitcases filled with samples waiting patiently to be squeezed into doctor’s busy patient schedule?
Erica Kelton, who wrote that Forbes article, said pharmaceutical companies continue to pay “record criminal and civil fines in the U.S. for illegal marketing practices.” There’s a key word in that remark: fines! As long as Big Pharma can make billions of dollars in sales annually, it can continue its illegal marketing practices because the feds will get their ‘fair share’ of the profits from pharmaceutical sales, I contend. Both should be considered criminal activity on the part of federal government agencies and Big Pharma because Pharma continues to do the same thing again and again, only to be fined again and again. Can readers perceive the apparent profit cycle, especially at your expense both health-wise and monetarily?
Regarding bribery, Kelton states:
"
Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, paid $60.2 million last month [August 2012] to the U.S. to settle charges that the company bribed government officials – including hospital administrators, government doctors and members of regulatory and purchasing committees — in China, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Kazakhstan to approve and prescribe Pfizer products."
See how a round-robin cycle apparently works! And, ostensibly, it’s an ongoing thing. Reuters reported on May 14, 2014 that
“4-Chinese police charge British former head of GSK in China with bribery.” Also that
"Other large international drugs manufacturers including
Novartis AG,
AstraZeneca Plc,
Sanofi SA ,
Eli Lilly & Co and
Bayer AG were also visited by Chinese officials in 2013 as part of a broad investigation into the business."
What is it that everyone doesn’t seem to be getting about Big Pharma that they get about other criminals such as sex offenders, i.e., when you do the crime, you pay the time. Sex offenders prey on relatively few victims as compared to the millions that Big Pharma’s fraud and deceit impact.
Obviously, Big Pharma has not been playing by the rules—otherwise, why the fines, yet we entrust them to make the medicines that supposedly make us well—or is that a sham too? How can we trust them, if they are dishonest with regard to some business practices?
Furthermore, Erica Kelton points out that in 2009 Pfizer paid $2.3 billion “for improper and illegal marketing of certain prescription drugs in the U.S.” Seemingly, Big Pharma is not prosecutable for crimes—only fines—which appear to be a ‘cash cow’ for the U.S. Treasury.
How about all the taxes the U.S. collects on each vaccine sold along with apparently holding patents on some vaccines? Caching, caching goes the cash register. Can that be a reason for mandating more and more vaccines be injected into more and more people from birth to very old age? Should we follow the money? as they say.
Continued...
