So we dedicate this round up of legal settlements by pharmaceutical companies announced last month, December, 2013, to Ed Silverman, who reported on two of the cases below, and whose reports have been silenced by the shutdown of the PharmaLot web-site by its corporate owner.
In alphabetical order by name of the pharmaceutical company,
Actelion $40.7 Million Damages for Keeping Possibly Competitive Drug Off the Market Upheld
This story was reported by Ed Silverman on Pharmalot, and by the San Francisco Chronicle. The basics, according to the latter article, were:
A state appeals court has upheld $407 million in damages against the Swiss biotechnology giant Actelion and its executives for buying a Bay Area company and using it to thwart another firm's plans to market a competing hypertension drug in the United States.
The drug, Fasudil, is manufactured by Ashai Kasei Pharma Corp of Japan for treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, an often fatal disease of the lung arteries. In June 2006, Asahi signed a licensing agreement with the South San Francisco biotech firm CoTherix, which agreed to develop oral and inhaled versions of Fasudil and seek regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe.
Less than five months later, Actelion bought CoTherix, paying a premium price of more than $400 million, and announced soon afterward that it was dropping plans to develop Fasudil. Actelion's own drug, Tracleer, dominates the U.S. market for treatment of the same disease and generates more than $1 billion in revenue a year.
Note that the federal appeals court judge, Terence Bruiniers, found that the actions by Actelion were not only anti-competitive, but may have harmed patients,
'By impeding the development of Fasudil, Actelion not only sabotaged a competitive and foreseeably profitable commercial venture, but prevented a drug with the potential for alleviating the suffering of patients with life-threatening and debilitating diseases from reaching the market,' Bruiniers wrote.
Further note that in this civil lawsuit, it appears that the top executives who engineered the anti-competitive actions that may have harmed patients will actually face negative consequences. The judge also said,
the jury was entitled to conclude that three Actelion executives - CEO Jean Paul Clozel, chief scientific officer Martine Clozel, and Simon Buckingham, director of corporate and business development - had shown a disregard for the rights of Asahi and its customers and were liable for $30 million in punitive damages, about 10 percent of the executives' net worth.
Sanofi Subsidiary Genzyme Settled Charges of Encouraging Unapproved Internal Use of SepraFilm for $22 Million
The longest version of this story appeared in the Tampa Bay Times. The basics were:
A Massachusetts-based biotechnology company has agreed to pay $22.28 million to resolve allegations brought by whistle-blowers in Tampa and Miami that it marketed an inappropriate use for a surgery medication, U.S. government attorneys said.
Genzyme, a corporation known for its research into drugs for rare genetic diseases, is paying the settlement in a lawsuit over Seprafilm, a material it manufactures for use in the operating room.
According to court documents, Genzyme sales representatives encouraged doctors to use the product in a manner not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, leading to improper claims for reimbursement from hospitals.
The details were:
According to court documents, Seprafilm is intended to be applied during open surgery to prevent organs and muscle tissue from sticking together. However, the whistle-blowers and lawyers for the federal government alleged that Genzyme sales representatives taught doctors to use it in less invasive procedures — such as laparoscopic or 'keyhole' surgeries — by mixing it into a liquidlike 'slurry' that could be injected into the body.
Apparently the sales representative who blew the whistle in this case "recognized that this was a potential danger." It certainly seems possible that the unapproved use of this material modified to be injected within the body might have resulted in harm to patients, and that at least its harmfulness when used in this manner had had never been tested. However, in this litigation as supported by the US Department of Justice the plaintiffs were "not required to prove ... that patients had been harmed."
Note that unlike the civil case above, and as is typical of federal lawsuits against big health care organizations, those company employees who authorized or directed the questionable actions did not suffer any negative consequences.
(Added on 19 January, 2013) - Further note that as the article implied, but did not emphasize, since 2011, Genzyme has been owned by Sanofi. Sanofi's last three major settlements since 2007 were summarized here.
Merck Fined 15.3 Million Euros for Smear Campaign Against Generic Competition
This case was reported by Ed Silverman on PharmaLot, and briefly by Reuters,
The French competition authority said on Thursday it had fined Schering-Plough, now owned by Merck, 15.3 million euros ($21 million) over what it called a smear campaign against generic competition to Subutex, its drug for opioid addiction.
It also handed out a fine of 414,000 euros to parent Merck and another of 318,000 euros to British supplier Reckitt Benckiser for anti-competitive behaviour in staging the campaign in late 2005.
Note that while this case did not involve any implications of physical harm to patients, it seemed to involve active deception.
Summary
First, as we have said for years, legal actions like those listed above may or may not result in huge financial penalties, and rarely result in penalties for individuals who authorized, directed or implemented the actions in question, but do serve as markers of the extent of misbehavior by large health care organizations. Such misbehavior may have adverse consequences for patients and for public health and the health care system.
Second, also as we have said for years, such actions mark the problem, but are unlikely to deter future problems. In fact, many large health care organizations have settled strings of cases since we started trying to keep track of them (and may not have done so completely). For example, the Genzyme, hence Sanofi settlement this year is at least the fourth major settlement by this company since 2007.
Settlements resulting in fines imposed on a company as a whole are diffused, paid by stockholders, employees, and patients, and hence are likely to be regarded as a cost of doing business by top management. Managers, however, often are given huge financial incentives for all actions that increase short term revenue. So managers are likely to continue to enable or direct bad behavior as long as it can bring in lots of revenue at no personal risk.
Third, while there has been a modest increase in discussion of ill-informed, mission-hostile, self-interested, conflicted, or even criminal or corrupt management since we started Health Care Renewal, the increasing plight of journalism seems to be making these issues more anechoic. The shutdown of PharmaLot and the silencing of its archives is another reminder of how public relations and marketing are now overwhelming disinterested reporting (see this report by Pro Publica).
If we really want to reverse the downward spiral of our ever more expensive, less accessible, and lower quality health care system, we first have to preserve our ability to identify and loudly discuss its problems.
Roy M. Poses MD for Health Care Renewal
