J&J Sales Rep Told Docs To Use Risperdal Off-Label
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 29th, 2009 // 3:04 pm
The admission came from Matt Thompson, a sales rep for Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit, who testified in a trial over claims by a former co-worker. In 2002, he said he pushed docs to consider prescribing Risperdal in combination with other drugs, even though this wasn’t approved by the FDA, and he noted that Jannsen’s training didn’t include any specific prohibitions against such promotions.
“I’m not saying the company tried to hide it, but we didn’t think about augmentation in the realm of on-label or off- label at that time,” Thompson said. He said he was “probably” aware that promotion of such sales was illegal, Bloomberg News reports.
The lawsuit was brought by Lynn Powell, 36, who claims she was fired in 2004 for complaining inside Jannsen about pressure to promote Risperdal for children and bipolar disorder patients when it was approved only for adults with schizophrenia, Bloomberg writes. Thompson was her supervisor when she was fired. J&J attorneys deny the claims and say Powell was fired for violating a ban on off-label promotion.
Been There
What is “probably” aware? These Big Pharma companies make me sick! They talk about compliance being a priority, but then they come up with these plans that are not compliant just to drive slaes. Then, if anyone questions the tactics, they fire them. I’ve seen it happen several times and careers have been ruined when employees try to do the right thing and management doesn’t.
Bob
When a company has thousands of people working for them and it trains and implores its sales reps to follow appropriate guidelines knowing it is ethically wrong and potentially devastating financially to do otherwise, I think maybe we should place into perspective that maybe, just maybe, it’s the person, not the company that is wrong, eh?
These companies are filled with different personalities and people with unique situations. It can’t have Lawyers following each rep around. And when the companies see or hear about problems, they usually take immediate action to resolve them - it’s in their best interests. They are very good at policing themselves, overall.
Although I am not aware of the circumstances surrounding the issues here, and there may have been something done wrong on the part of the company and/or the rep/supervisor, it’s my opinion that a few bad apples shouldn’t upset the entire apple cart. Pharmaceutical companies, and their constituencies including Physicians and Hospitals, do good things for people! Think about that when you need a drug or a diagnostic tool when your life, or the life/health of your children, friends, and family are on the line.
Doc
Bob,
You sound like a pharma troll fella. The industry most definitely benefited from the excessive sales of atypical anti psychotics to CHILDREN for bipolar disorder. Bipolar wasn’t even possible in children until the updated versions of the DSM4. The industry at the very least set up the environment where pushing off label use was rewarded and at most encouraged the practice outright. The corrupt association between psychiatry and pharma goes back 20 years at least.
Children suffer because of this corruption, wake up and smell the koolaid Jack
D Bunker
Dear Bob;
J&J owns 250 subsidiary companies. With That kind of money they can Afford to have individual Lawyers follow their sales reps around.
Potentially devastating financially?
J&J has more money than God.
The three Harvard musketeers responsible for the over 4000% Increase in Diagnoses of Kiddie Bipolar which Doc pointed out, were led by a guy who claimed, on the stand, that Above his own exalted Short Fuse, Bipolar Tantrums involving Research Funding to peddle antipsychotics to CHILDREN, there was, Only God.
Those Harvard musketeers bagged themselves a kool $4.2 Personal MILLIONS to peddle antipsychotics, to CHILDREN.
Google up the Frontline video series titled, “The Medicated Child” and watch the neurologic damage those kids are exhibiting from J&J’s sales reps & researchers following ‘appropriate guidelines’.
Veritas
Dear Bob,
While drugs help some, they harm others. They saved my husband’s life (from Wegener’s Granulomatosis), but almost killed my son (off-label, reckless prescription of Risperdal). The final result: the public increasingly is losing trust in pharmaceuticals and the M.D.’s who prescribe them. The public no longer trusts the FDA, as they suspect 1) money changes hands to get drugs to market quickly and/or 2) their work is sloppy and careless. And once a drug has been approved by the FDA, any M.D. can prescribe it for any purpose, whether that M.D. knows anything about neurology or not! It is a recipe for disaster, which is precisely what we are seeing.