UK Sentences Former J&J Exec For Corruption
11 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // April 15th, 2010 // 7:00 am
A former executive at Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy International unit pleaded guilty for his role in paying $7 million in bribes to Greek doctors and was sentenced to 12 months in jail, according to the UK’s Serious Fraud Office. Robert John Dougall, 44, a former UK marketing director, admitted to paying commissions in advance of sales made by Medec, a Greek distributor of DePuy’s orthopedic products.
Some funds were used for “cash incentives” or “professional education” to persuade Greek surgeons to use DePuy products. But the incentives “were no more than euphemisms to make corrupt payments,” according to the SFO. The money was first sent to a company registered on the Isle of Man, which was owned by Medec’s parent.
This is the first leg in a “major SFO corruption investigation,” the SFO noted, adding that a probe into others is ongoing and that Dougall, who cooperated with the probe, didn’t seek or gain any personal benefit from the payments. He was charged in December with conspiracy to corrupt (back story).
Two years ago, J&J disclosed that unspecified foreign subsidiaries may have made improper payments in some unnamed countries related to the sale of medical devices. And J&J acknowledged the payments may fall within the jurisdiction of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission were notified. Michael Dormer, the global head of devices and diagnostics, retired at the time of the disclosure (background).
Last fall, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division warned the pharmaceutical industry that there will be more criminal enforcement against interactions with foreign officials (read more here).
Pharma Conduct Guy
And to think, J&J is certainly one of the most ethical of all big pharma.
Cynical
So why don’t we in the US follow this example and prosecute & sentence Merck, GSK, and all the other industries that wine & dine the legislators in America through Women in Government?
WIG hosts “educational” conventions at 5-star hotels (like Harrah’s in Vegas) all across America, with most of the money coming from mega-corporations as sponsors. Many of the ladies get to attend these galas for free, under “scholarships” paid for by the sponsors.
One such gala, a black-tie event in Atlanta, with the theme as HPV, was sponsored by Merck & GSK with none other than Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s wife as keynote speaker. Just a few weeks later Gov. Perry made his infamous decision to mandate the HPV vaccine in his state. The other WIG members followed by attempting to have it mandated in each of their respective states…. now tell me that what Merck & GSK did with the legislators was any different than what J&J did?
patrons99
@ Cynical,
Very inciteful comment. The Texas governor and his wife were effectively “bought off” by pharma. I am, quite frankly, horrified that he was re-elected. This type of thing apparently happens all the time, at great direct and indirect cost to the public health and strained healthcare budgets all across the country. This will undoubtedly not be pharma’s last foray into gaining government mandates for their toxic cocktails. I’m afraid HPV vaccine is just the tip of the iceberg.
Cynical
Tip of the iceberg? Want a chill that’s more avalanche than iceberg? Look up Advance Market Commitments. You’ll find that the G8 have made binding commitments to force lots of vaccines onto healthy children who don’t need them, in return for pharma’s promise to sell or give them away to 3rd world countries, mostly in Africa.
Among the top vaccines on the AMC list are pneumococcal, HPV, rotavirus and malaria. … and now that the malaria vaccine is just about ready, you’ll see that advance “warnings” are starting to hit the American public in the form of PSAs saying malaria will soon be something Americans will have to deal with.
Oh– and even though you don’t see the US in the pneumococcal AMC list with PATH & WHO, we’re still part of the AMCs. In fact, a few years ago, Sens. Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel,Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar all co-sponsored a bill containing hundreds of millions of dollars specifically for AMCs — buried in the middle of a military spending bill.
patrons99
Cynical -
I have been trying to warn folks on this board of this nightmare for quite a while now. I welcome your input and insights, whole-heartedly. You really ought to comment on another of Ed’s posts from today at this link:
http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/04/who-experts-deny-pharma-influenced-h1n1-vaccine/
Do I think that pharma influenced both the WHO experts and the WHO in their H1N1 vaccine? Are you kidding me?
The WHO, CDC, FDA, Gates Foundation, and the GAVI Alliance are completely in pharma’s pocket. Pharma has always been the global puppetmaster. They are not acting in OUR best interest. Their interests are completely conflicted.
Cynical
I think pharma’s role in the flu pandemic was as supporting actor this time around… I’ve pretty much gathered all the circumstantial evidence necessary to show that H1N1 was simply a practice pandemic for a possible real thing. I’ll never have the actual proof without admission on the part of WHO and all the other world actors, of course, including good ol’ Paul Offit who, along with a personal aide to Nancy Pelosi, served on a consulting group for the draft AMC.
patrons99
Thanks for reminding of Dr Paul “for Profit” Offit. “Children can safely tolerate 10,000 vaccines”!
http://www.lowellsfacts.com/paulforprofitoffit.html
And as for “a practice pandemic for a possible real thing”, I thought that it was particularly ironic that pneumonic flu drills were being held in Illinois, at about the same time that the hemorrhagic pneumonia outbreak was taking place in the Ukraine.
http://www.baxter.com/baxter_worldwide.html
patrons99
Talk about creepy, frightening, and truly disgusting: notice who is on the governance for the “Center for Vaccine Ethics and Policy”, none other than Paul Offit. The world is now taking ethics lessons from Paul Offit. You can’t make this stuff up! Reality has become much stranger than fiction.
http://centerforvaccineethicsandpolicy.wordpress.com/about/
Roto
A lot of anti-vaccine freaks here. Junk science wins again. Not to mention free riders who are kept safe by those who do get vaccinated. Thanks a lot.
patrons99
@ Roto - “junk science” and “free riders”
Oh Really!
In light of the recent mumps outbreak in New York and New Jersey, how certain are we that the multi-vaccinated public are not acting as a potential reservoir for future outbreaks, possibly due to weakened natural immunity?
Do we have any real clue as to what long term effect repetitive stimulation of our natural immune system might have with each jab? e.g., with metals, adjuvants, preservatives, uncertain biologic recombinants.
In preventive medicine, the buck stops with safety. The burden of proof lies with the vaccine proponent, not the healthy skeptic. Is the point missed on you, that the most zealous vaccine proponents just happen to be subsidized by the multinational drug consortium? e.g., Merck, Glaxo, Novartis. Personally, I don’t want my health choices dictated to me at the point of a needle, by entities that really don’t have my best interest at heart.
In an article on February 11, 2010, titled “Mumps outbreak spreads among people who got vaccinated against mumps”, Mike Adams makes some very interesting points.
http://www.naturalnews.com/z028142_mumps_vaccines.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/08/mumps.outbreak.northeast/index.html?hpt=T2
“Just this week, an outbreak of mumps among more than 1,000 people in New Jersey and New York has raised alarm among infectious disease authorities. The outbreak itself is not unusual, though. What’s unusual is that the health authorities slipped up and admitted that most of the people infected with mumps had already been vaccinated against mumps.”
Aluminum adjuvants are neurotoxins. No amount of bluster, hyperbole, and misinformation by the VAXERs will ever change this reality. See the following three scientific articles cited below. This is not junk science. Autism is certainly not the only “vaccinosis” associated with today’s vaccine schedules.
An article by Christopher A. Shaw and Michael S. Petrik titled, “Aluminum hydroxide injections lead to motor deficits and motor neuron degeneration” in Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Volume 103, Issue 11, November 2009, Pages 1555-1562.
Doi: 10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2009.05.019
An article by Christopher A. Shaw and Gunter U. Hoglinger titled, “Neurodegenerative Diseases: Neurotoxins as Sufficient Etiologic Agents?” in NeuroMolecular Medicine, Volume 10, Number 1 / March, 2008.
Doi: 10.1007/s12017-007-8016-8
An article by Maryline Couette, et al titled, “Long-term persistence of vaccine-derived aluminum hydroxide is associated with chronic cognitive dysfunction”in Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Volume 103, Issue 11, November 2009, Pages 1571-1578.
Doi: 10.1016/j.jinorgbio.209.08.005
Cynical
ROTO: Junk science? I would think that the real junk science is the lie that so many people believe — that vaccines will fully protect against everything.
Fact is, over 75 percent of the people in that mumps outbreak were FULLY VACCINATED. In some age groups, as many as 93 percent were fully vaccinated.
Explain that one, please, and don’t blame it on somebody who wasn’t vaccinated… because, you see, if the vaccine works, it shouldn’t matter if somebody isn’t vaccinated because the science says you’re protected, right? Unless of course, it’s junk science that just wants to sell vaccines and make you think the emperor’s wearing clothes.
The worst part of all this is the thousands of young girls who think they’ll never get cervical cancer because they got the HPV vaccine, mainly because nobody bothered to tell them that 30 percent of other HPVs could still give them cancer, that the vaccine could, and probably will, wear off, meaning they’ll need a booster (but when?), that they still need annual Pap tests, and that — here’s the biggie — if they were positive for the HPVs against which the vaccine protects at the time they got the shot, IT DOESN’T WORK.
The thing is, real science suggests they should have been tested for HPVs before they got the shot, so they would be assured that they were HPV-free and therefore most likely to be protected… but then that wouldn’t make the shot so cost-effective (not that it’s cost-effective, anyway), seeing that the QALY for the HPV shot in America is 2 DAYS.
So they’re risking their lives with all the reported side effects of this shot for 2 extra DAYS of life, and that’s only if they were going to get cervical cancer in the first place…. and now they may get it BECAUSE they got the shot, and weren’t told all the other caveats.