Aegerion Sentenced to Pay $7.2 Million to Patients

On January 30, 2018, Federal U.S. District Court Judge William Young sentenced Aegerion to pay some of the roughly $36 million fine for off-label marketing to Juxtapid patients. In November, Judge Young rejected an initial plea deal between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Novelion Therapeutics (who now owns Aegerion) because it would have restricted his ability to impose a sentence upon the company. Judge Young instead sentenced Aegerion in a deal that gave him discretion to determine how the payment would be split up. Young ordered the company to pay $7.2 million – the same amount the company had agreed to pay from the beginning – as part of the total $40.1 million fine. Young’s concern with the DOJ-Aegerion agreement was that it was a fine that entirely went to the government, he instead wanted it to go to ninety-one patients who may have been harmed by Aegerion’s conduct. In a statement to the prosecution, Young stated, “I think you ought to pay more attention to the actual people who were harmed here.” He also went on to say, “I feel so strongly that people who were harmed by this criminality ought to have some recompense,” as quoted by the Boston Globe. The patients who were affected and are set to receive a portion of the fine had taken Juxtapid for reasons other than the FDA-approved marketed reasons (which was to treat high cholesterol in people with a rare genetic disease). Instead, the company promoted the drug to patients who did not ha...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs