Johnson & Johnson Settlement Nothing New for Company; Small Fine Unlikely to Prompt Change in Behavior says Public Citizen
Johnson & Johnson Settlement Nothing New for Company; Small Fine Unlikely to Prompt Change in BehaviorStatement of Sammy Almashat, Researcher, Public Citizen’s Health Research GroupNov. 4, 2013Contact: Angela Bradbery (202) 588-7741; Sam Jewler (202) 588-7779Today’s announcement that Johnson & Johnson has agreed to plead guilty to several criminal charges and pay $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines to the federal and state governments is the latest in a long line of multibillion-dollar health fraud settlements reached between the drug industry and the federal and state governments. The settlement ranks as ...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 5, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers Remarks at the Johnson & Johnson Press Conference
Attorney General Eric Holder Delivers Remarks at the Johnson & Johnson Press Conference ~ Monday, November 4, 2013 Good morning – and thank you all for being here.  I am joined by Associate Attorney General [Tony] West; Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division [Stuart] Delery; U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania [Zane] Memeger; U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts [Carmen] Ortiz; First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California [Brian] Stretch; and Deputy Inspector General for Investigations at the Department of Health and Human Services [Gary] Cantrell...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 5, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $2.2 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations - DoJ
Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $2.2 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations Allegations Include Off-label Marketing and Kickbacks to Doctors and Pharmacists WASHINGTON - Global health care giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and its subsidiaries will pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from allegations relating to the prescription drugs Risperdal, Invega and Natrecor, including promotion for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and payment of kickbacks to physicians and to the nation’s largest long-term care phar...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 5, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Former sales rep sues Indy-based Eli Lilly for bonus pay, seeks class-action status
During her two years as a temporary sales representative for Eli Lilly and Co., Leslie Pinciaro Dudley earned some lucrative incentive bonuses that the company dangled to encourage its sales force to work hard.But she didn’t collect all the bonuses she felt she earned.The Jacksonville, Fla., woman is suing Lilly, alleging the Indianapolis drugmaker breached a contract by not paying her some $15,000 in incentive pay that she thinks she is entitled to.Dudley’s lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Florida, asks the court to declare her case a class action, opening it up to perhaps 150 other short-term sales repres...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 4, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

GlaxoChinaGate contd. - The Big Fix
Chinese police investigating allegations of widespread corrupt practices at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are likely to charge some of its Chinese executives but not the British drugmaker itself, legal and industry sources said. A charge against GSK itself would be a much more serious outcome for the company because it would imply higher-level corporate involvement and could result in major fines and even disruption to its operations in China. Police are also unlikely to lay criminal charges against Briton Mark Reilly, GSK’s former head of China operations, the sources said. There will likely be big fines, but it’s unlikely...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 4, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Are Farm Veterinarians Pushing Too Many Antibiotics? - NPR
Enlarge imageCattle crowd inside a feedlot operated by JBS Five Rivers Colorado Beef in Wiley, Colo.John Moore/Getty ImagesIn a barn outside Manhattan, Kan., researchers from Kansas State University are trying to solve the riddle of bovine respiratory disease. They're sticking plastic rods down the noses of 6-month old calves, collecting samples of bacteria."This bacteria, Mannheimia haemolytica, lives in most cattle," explains Mike Apley, one of the research leaders. Sometimes, for reasons that aren't well understood, those bacteria make cattle sick. When that happens, or when it just seems likely to happen, cat...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 2, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Treasure Ireland contd.
Troika chief: Pharmaceutical drug costs cannot be justifiedFriday, November 01, 2013The head of the European Commission’s troika mission to Ireland told Government TDs the cost of pharmaceutical drugs here cannot be justified, and is at least three times more expensive than in Britain.By Juno McEnroe Political ReporterIstvan Szekely, EC director of economic and financial affairs, told the delegation of Fine Gael and Labour TDs that pharmaceutical drug costs were an outstanding issue and were “not sustainable”. Mr Szekely’s comments came after troika sources earlier this week told the Irish Examiner there were ...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 1, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

How much is another day worth?
“There is a number in people’s minds,” he says. “If you say to people, ‘I have a drug that extends life by one day at a billion dollars; shouldn’t we as a society pay for it?,’ I’m pretty confident most people would say no. If I say, ‘I have a drug that extends life by three years at a cost of $1.50,’ I’m pretty confident everybody would say, ‘Of course!’ Somewhere in there is a number, a tipping point, where we say, ‘No, we can’t.’ Right now, we’re unwilling as a society to explore where that point is. And I would argue that we have to. Wherever it may be, we have to find it.”...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 1, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Tales from the PMCPA contd. - The Case of the Errant Email
An NHS clinical commissioning group employee complained that a Sanofi representative had persuaded an NHS employee to send, on his/her behalf, a promotional email via the NHS.net system to all GP practices in the area.  The email invited recipients to view a Sanofi promotional webcast.   The detailed response from Sanofi is given below.   The Panel noted that the email sent by the administrative assistant on behalf of the Sanofi representative had a subject heading of ‘FW:Sanofi GLP-1 Webcast’.  The email itself was headed ‘Sent on behalf of [named representative] – Sanofi’ ‘Practice Man...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 1, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Merck To Layoff 500 Workers
 Merck plans to layoff 500 workers at its West Point facility in Upper Gwynedd, Pa., according to our news-gathering partners at the Philadelphia Business Journal.Back on Oct. 1, Merck announced plans to cut 8,500 jobs as part of an effort to reduce expenses by $2.5 billion by the end of 2015, reports the newspaper.The global health care company, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, employs 80,000 people worldwide.The Business Journal reports that those layoffs will take between Dec. 23 and Jan. 5, 2014, according to a WARN notice filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.http://w...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 1, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

AllTrials - The Harvard Way
Report Proposes Ways to Expand Access to Clinical Trial DataResearchers from Harvard, together with members of a group created by the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center, released a report last week that proposed ways to expand access to clinical trial data.The report--published online in The New England Journal of Medicine--outlined the possible benefits and risks, ethical and legal issues, and logistical questions associated with expanding access to participant-level data, which have, in the past, been considered confidential by the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates clinical tr...
Source: PharmaGossip - October 31, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

How brilliant is Brilinta?
AstraZeneca US drug trial queriedAstraZeneca's chief executive Pascal Soriot says he is very confident in the findings of the clinical trial of heart drug Brilinta. Photograph: Lynne Cameron/PAAstraZeneca is being investigated by US authorities over a clinical trial that was used to win marketing approval for its heart drug Brilinta, casting fresh doubts over the medicine.Brilinta sales have been a disappointment since its launch two years ago, although AstraZeneca has recently stepped up marketing efforts and hopes that further clinical tests will underscore its value in preventing heart attacks.The British drug...
Source: PharmaGossip - October 31, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

AllTrials contd. Unpublished Trial Data Violates An Ethical Obligation To Study Participants
29% of large clinical trials remain unpublished five years after completion and, of those, 78% have no results publicly available, according to a paper published yesterday.This means that an estimated 250,000 people have been exposed to the risks of trial participation without the societal benefits that accompany the dissemination of their results, worry the authors. Of course, the participants all volunteered for the trials and had informed consent and many were even paid so claiming they were 'exposed to the risks' is emotional verbage designed to guide the public into one conclusion: all trial results should be publishe...
Source: PharmaGossip - October 30, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Martha Rosenberg gets my vote, Marylyn!
Pharma 'Muckraker' Top Choice for New Journalism Project By GUEST BLOGGER | Published: OCTOBER 25, 2013 Pharma Muckraker? Reporter Glenn Greenwald,  who has been in the news recently for disseminating  the whistle-blower and former CIA employee Edward Snowden’s information on the US’s mass surveillance  program has left the Guardian where his initial articles appeared. Along with filmmaker Laura Poitras (also covering the Snowden story) and Jeremy Scahill, Greenwald is joining up with Pierre Omidyar, one of the founders of Ebay, who has announced that he’s funding a journalism ...
Source: PharmaGossip - October 30, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Herper grills Witty! Well, lightly toasts .....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/10/29/can-this-man-make-you-believe-in-drug-companies/#! (Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - October 30, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs