An interesting take on the Pfizer-Bextra affair from the FT - the responsibility of the reps:
Blowing whistles
September 7, 2009 10:57am
by Margaret McCartney
I’ve been kindly pointed toward an interview held a couple of days ago on BBC World Service: Pfizer agrees record fraud fine. John Kopchinski, a Gulf War veteran, was a sales rep for Pfizer who was fired by them after he claimed that one drug, Bextra, was being mis-sold. Pfizer agrees to plead guilty in painkiller case
There were 3,000 reps being asked to do work that was “blatantly illegal” including recommending the drug for acute pain, which it wasn’t licensed for, and at higher doses than what it had been approved for.
The reps were paid fifty dollars for each surgical protocol - proof of prescribing - obtained, despite the fact that this drug wasn’t licensed for use in this setting. It took over 6 years for Kopchinski to expose this, as he has recently done, via the US False Claims Act. Pfizer have to pay $2.3bn in civil and criminal penalties: Kopchinski himself will be awarded over $50m million.
He sounds a very admirable, and brave man. Five other reps were also involved in the lawsuit. This means, though, that approximately 2,994 reps did nothing about what they were hearing about Bextra. |
