Pfizer pays $2.3 billion off-label marketing fine : Neuron Culture

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I write articles on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications, and am working on my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which expands on my recent December 2009 Atlantic article. In August 2010, I'll be moving to London for a year to work on the book. I'll also serve as a senior fellow at City University London's MA science journalism program.

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Worth Noting

Pfizer pays $2.3 billion off-label marketing fine

Posted on: January 27, 2009 9:05 PM, by David Dobbs

Close on the heels of Lilly's $1.42 billion penalty for off-label marketing comes the news that Pfizer paid out $2.3 billion to settle similar allegations.

From FiercePharma

News of the Pfizer-Wyeth merger this morning drowned out some not so good news for the company. Just after announcing its $68 billion buyout of Wyeth, Pfizer published its 2008 fourth quarter earnings report. In it, Pfizer reveals a $2.3 billion charge to end investigations into allegations of off-label promotions of the company's COX-2 meds, including Bextra. That settlement caused a 90 percent reduction in Pfizer's 2008 net income, according to its financial report.

Update 9/3/09: This fine went public on Sept 2, 2009, when the Dept of Justice announced the full $2.3 billion and a settlement that included criminal convictions. Huge, unprecedented fine, the biggest criminal fine in DOJ history. But as I note in a post on Sept 2, at least one observer says, absurdly, that the fine (from an investigation four years in the making) is a money grab from Obama to curb medical costs and federalize healthcare.

Indeed, the settlement, which normally would be a pretty big story on its own, is showing up in many papers as just one piece of news within Pfizer's complicated acquisition and fourth-quarter data -- as in this Boston News-Herald story, for example. Some savvy news management, there. A fine that would ordinarily resonate has been swallowed up by an acquisition story that is getting mostly positive press; no mention in the News-Herald, for instance, of whether Pfizer admitted to criminal wrong-doing, as Lilly did.

This is big fine, though. It'll be interesting to see these billion-plus dollar fines bring drug companies to pull back the presumably profitable off-label marketing.