Playing with people’s health is punished: for the last three years, many pharmaceutical companies have put profit before patient safety. Nine of them have been fined more than $11 billion since 2009, but the fact that sales of drugs reach $350 billion in U.S. only, makes them quite insignificant.
GlaxoSmithKline holds the record fine – in July 2012, U.S. Department of Justice ruled that the company must pay $3 billion for illegal promotion of some drugs, hiding certain data on the safety of drugs and for making false statements on prices.
Before this, the company that received the highest fine was Pfizer, which in 2009 had to pay $2.3 billion for the illegal promotion of drugs. In August 2012, the same company had to pay U.S. authorities $60 million, following allegations of bribery. Pfizer would have corrupted doctors and officials from Europe and China to promote and recommend its products.
Eli Lilly company admitted in January 2009 of selling the drug Zyprexa for 4 years for the treatment of senile dementia, although it had been approved only for schizophrenia. Total fines paid for this reached $1.42 billion, very little compared to a profit of $36 billion made from sales of Zyprexa, between 2000 and 2008.
In 2012, Abbott Laboratories was fined of $1.5 billion for promoting the drug Depakote without having conclusive evidence of its efficiency.
The list of the other companies includes Merck, fined in 2011 – $950 million, Allergan fined in 2010 – $600 million, AstraZeneca in 2010 – $520 million, Novartis in 2010 – $422.5 million and again, GlaxoSmithKline, in 2009 – 400 million.
It should be noted, however, that in general, pharmaceutical companies allocate every year huge amounts for research and development of new therapies, more effective. In Europe alone, annual investment for R & D were $27 billion and this sector generates 600,000 direct jobs, and about three times more indirect jobs.
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