Congress Probes Wyeth For Allegedly Targeting Blacks
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 11th, 2010 // 4:37 pm
The House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform has launched a probe into Wyeth for allegedly promoting its Rapamune kidney transplant drug for unaproved uses and, specifically, targeting African-Americans, even though this is a high-risk patient group. The move by the committee, which likened the marketing to the scandalous Tuskegee medical experiment, follows allegations made in a recently unsealed lawsuit filed in 2005 by two former sales reps (see here).
Those former reps contend that Wyeth, which is now owned by Pfizer, encouraged its sales force to promote Rapamune to doctors practicing heart, lung, liver, pancreas, and islet cell transplants even though the drug was never approved for patients receiving transplants of these organs. Rapamune was only approved to help prevent organ rejection after a kidney transplant.
Rapamune is supposed to be administered following a kidney transplant and used in conjunction with cyclosporine and corticosteroids. However, cyclosporine is also supposed to be withdrawn after two to four months, because it can eventually poison the kidneys, although this step is not approved for African-Americans and other high-risk groups. African-Americans are considered high-risk because they exhibit more vigorous immune responses to transplants.
“When patients seek medicinal therapy, they want to know the side effects and that the prescriptions offered to them have been FDA approved to treat their illness. The most egregious problem here is that, unbeknown to the African Americans’ they allegedly targeted, their lives were placed at serious risk for life threatening ailments,” says committee chair Ed Towns in a statement. “Numerous federal indictments have been handed down for pharmaceutical companies’ use of off-label drugs, and if true, this type of irresponsible experimentation is another example of big companies preying on vulnerable consumers. Unfortunately, these marketing techniques are reminiscent of Tuskegee all over again.”
Justice in MI
Apologies in advance for this overly general comment.
I have been away for the past week and thus not had access to internet/Pharmalot. But I spent a good deal of the time reading about industry issues.
I have tried to be fair and reasonable in my contributions here. I continue to believe that the vast majority of people who work in pharma have the same integrity (or more) than in most other arenas, including academia, my own.
Nevertheless, I have come away from my week with the conviction that there is something more profoundly rotten in the industry than I had realized. It shows itself in certain contexts and among certain “players.” It is probably also no more pronounced in pharma than in contemporary corporate life in general.
Nevertheless, because of what pharma does, and because of what is at stake, there are different responsibilities and different consequences, which are neither offset nor justified by the extent to which the industry is regulated.
In short, I return with the conviction that we are in considerably worse shape than I thought. This latest story appears to be one more expression of a heedlessness and ruthlessness that deserves at least as much condemnation as anything BP has perpetrated.
We will all have hell to pay.
Matthew Holford
Bill Clinton said:
“…”What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say, on behalf of the American people: what the United States government did was shameful.
“And I am sorry [because seeing as how we've been caught in our lie, we have little fucking choice but to express our sorrow, but you can rest assured that no such apology would be forthcoming, if we could perceive any way of denying it. Now, fuck off, because that's the extent of our contrition].”
Matt
What Constituants
Different industry same old story.
At least 56 industry lobbyists have served on the personal staffs of the 43 Senate and House members who will have a hand in shaping the bill over the next two weeks, according to an analysis by Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics, two government watchdogs.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Dealmakers-or-dealbreakers-apf-678792631.html?x=0
Very curious what you read this past week Justice.
Justice in MI
Constituents–Mainly, a bunch of articles I had stowed away related to pharma marketing to young adults, their parents, and their docs.
Thus, a bunch of stuff related to atypicals, SSRIs, Gardasil, Yaz, ADHD drugs, et. al.–from both med. journals and more general media. Also, lots of internal documents as those have become available following a range of litigation.
What I was referring to above was a spiraling culture of corruption–a race to the bottom in pursuit of market share. When you read the internal documents, for example, it becomes clear that being “unmasked” by the competition looms as a greater concern than lawsuits or criminal busts. To that degree, I suppose, market forces have both a corrupting and regulatory effect.
Salmon
JiM,
While that used to be true. In the past decade the pharmaceutical industry has openly and effectively said.
Come brothers are interests are shared. We can make more by working together than against each other.
Salmon
Justice in MI
Kumbaya!
Interesting, Salmon. Some of the internal docs suggest there may be less solidarity than you suggest, but I suppose it is all relative.
Thanks.