Creators of the poster-child for prescription drug abuse gets their just desserts:
Purdue Pharma L.P., its president, top lawyer and former chief medical officer will pay $634.5 million in fines for claiming the drug was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications, U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said in a news release.Purdue learned from focus groups with physicians in 1995 that doctors were worried about the abuse potential of OxyContin. The company then gave false information to its sales representatives that the drug had less potential for addiction and abuse than other painkillers, the U.S. attorney said.
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- "Abuse-resistant OxyContin"
- Drug reps getting cranky
- The race to set definitive guidelines
- Is Gardasil’s recent bad PR helping sales?
- How much does a drug rep cost?
- A physician defends the expert witness system
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{ 10 comments }
The medical marketplace depends on trust. Liars must be held accountable.
Now if we could only see the same just deserts for those that peddled the drug as if it were candy.
“The medical marketplace depends on trust. Liars must be held accountable,”
Yeah sure.
At least this time a lying lawyer got caught up in his own snare.
“Now if we could only see the same just deserts for those that peddled the drug as if it were candy.”
I give that a hearty thumbs up. I know several people whose lives have been destroyed by this drug (divorce, bankruptcy, etc.) where the blame can be directly laid at the feet of the doc who prescribed it.
Honestly, who tells their patients that if Motrin doesn’t work for their osteoarthritis, the next step is OxyContin????? WHO??!?!?!
It makes me mad just thinking about it.
RJS,
Why the doc? Did these people not know narcotics have the potential to be addictive? Do they bear no responsibility for abusing drugs?
This is about the drug company reps telling the docs that the drug had less abuse potential and the companies culpability for instructing them to do so. It is not about what legal and moral culpability the doctors had for acting on that misinformation, or the end consumer’s misjudgement in believing his doctor if the lie was spread to him.
Ultimately, we are all responsible for whatever decisions we make, including whom we chose to believe. The reason a doctor is trained in basic science is so that he can read and analyze research and make his own judgements about the claims presented to him by others, such as drug manufactorers. So the doctor is responsible professionally for failing to evaluate the information given him objectively. I suppose we could say the patient is responsible for not being adequately mistrustful of doctors!
Being professionally irresponsible is not criminal, it is malpractice. Trusting your duly liscensed expert may be foolish, depending on how cynical is your world-view, but is certainly not criminal. Lying for profit is fraud. That is criminal. We put people in cages for that in this country and probably should do so with more consistency.
Remember RJS is a pharmacist not a doctor. It is easy to pontificate about a doctor’s actions when you don’t know the whole story and have not been trained in that profession.
I’ve had it to the eyeballs with lying drug companies. I think that we should:
1. Require drug companies to release ALL data regarding products for sale.
2. Prohibit drug companies from ANY marketing.
3. Waive all product liability except for deception–and pursue criminal complaints when that occurs.
4. Enact trade sanctions against countries like India, which do not uphold the patents of American companies.
My one complaint about the criminal action against this company is that the specific individuals who initiated the policy of lying have not been identified and convicted. Once again the new culture of non-accountability is somewhat reinforced.
Well, I don’t buy it. Doctors spend far longer, getting a much more detailed education than any sales rep for the drug company. If a doctor, after all those years of training is foolish enough to take the word of a drug rep, rather then apply his own knowledge he is acting beyond irresponsible. Legal consequenses are often based on your intent as well as what you could be expected to know and when. I do not believe that their is any liscensed doctor out there that is ignorant of the potential of opiates. I don’t believe that there is any doctor out there who doesn’t know what OxyContin is and therefore exactly what its potential impact is on a patient. In fact I have spoken with my family dentist and found that the move at his hospital to curtail informational education to people who had to spend prolonged time periods on pain killers.
Any doctor who doesn’t know what heroin can do shouldn’t be a doctor and any doctor who pretends to not know the OxyContin was an opiate is just plain as big a liar as the executives of Purdue Pharma. Doctors are pressured to empty beds, keep costs down, and shift the responsibility to the pain management dept, IF there is one. So, by logic, if you are a doctor who doesn’t know what the opiate OxyContin will do to a patient, you need to quit, because you are so imcompetent that it is criminal.
I think they call if depraved indifference and people convicted of depraved indifference get convicted of criminal man slaughter.
The previous poster is absolutely correct. Physicians will be the first to stick out their chest and let anyone know that they would never listen to a drug rep about what or how they prescribe. “They are used for lunch and their gifts.” When the damn breaks like the oxycontin lawsuits, the reps and the drug companies are the first ones the physician wants to blame. You don’t deserve all the blame but you are an accessory.
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