Guide to paying a small fine and making billions
by Jon Rappoport
May 30, 2018
The key factor is: be a drug company.
In this case, Celgene. Their drugs are Thalomid and Revlimid. They are approved for multiple myeloma, one type of cancer.
Here’s the thing. Doctors can decide to prescribe drugs for uses which are not approved by the FDA, but the manufacturers can’t promote those “off-label” uses to doctors. That’s illegal.
A long-running suit against Celgene, launched by Beverly Brown, who used to be the company’s sales manager, contends that:
Celgene trained its sales team to promote off-label uses to doctors;
Celgene sales people intentionally lied about studies, claiming the studies showed the off-label uses were beneficial to patients;
And the company omitted vital warnings about the drugs’ uses from the drugs’ labels.
Back in 2014, the judge in the case, George King, slammed Celgene for trying to convince him to dismiss the case. King pointed out that the plaintiff, Beverly Brown, appeared to have direct knowledge of the scam, because company higher-ups laid out the details to her.
Finally, now, the lawsuit has been settled. Celgene will pay out $280 million.
But wait. Revlimid, one of the two Celgene drugs named in the suit, garnered a whopping $5 billion in sales, in 2015. FiercePharma, a website dedicated to industry news, predicts the drug will rake in $15 billion in 2022.
On top of all this, Celgene admits no wrongdoing in the lawsuit settlement.
Nice work if you can get it, and Celgene can.
There is an easy formula at work, if you’re a drug company.
Misrepresent the uses of a drug.
Promote it to the sky, to doctors, for purposes for which it wasn’t approved.
Therefore, make billions of dollars.
Get sued, go to court, force the case to drag on for years.
And finally settle up for chump change, admit nothing, promise nothing, and walk away, free as a bird.
That’s a plan.
That’s a workable plan, UP FRONT.
Before the drug is ever approved.
“Let’s see. We’ve got a drug for cancer. Hey, it’s highly toxic and it causes cancer in some people and, at best, it doesn’t really prolong survival in the patient for more than a few months of extreme suffering and pain—but we aren’t even talking about that. We’ve got a cancer drug, and we can get it approved for treating one type of cancer. Once that happens, we can promote it like hell to doctors for treating other cancers. That’s illegal, but who cares? Even if the federal government gets involved in the case, the most we can expect is a fine. Nobody will go to jail. So, BY SUCCESSFULLY PROMOTING THE DRUG FOR ILLEGAL USES, A VERY NECESSARY STEP, our profit picture will look great. Eventually, we’ll get sued. So what? We’ll pay a small fine, the drug will still be on the market, and life will be good. For us.”
Get it?
A drug company isn’t scrambling after the fact of getting sued, trying to figure out how to proceed. That would be fake news.
No, the company has the whole scenario figured out from the beginning.
“Dear Drug, when you were just a gleam in your parents’ eye, we knew your birth would be a wonderful event. And dear child, you’ve made us proud. With a push from us, you’ve exceeded all our expectations. You’ve grown up to be a winner. Here’s to you.”
By the way, if you want a good example of crony capitalism, as opposed to actual capitalism (in which buyer and seller voluntarily engage in commerce, the product does not cause harm, the people involved are honorable, the exchange of value for value isn’t regulated), you’ve just found one:
A medical drug’s manufacturer, and the federal government, and even the prescribing doctors, all know a drug is useless for off-label purposes, and also creates harm. But all the parties (cronies) feign ignorance, while protecting each other, and no law-enforcement agency charges any participant with a crime. All parties involved pretend, when the suit is filed and the settlement is reached, that justice has been done. One hand washes the other.
And, at the same time, if a researcher or doctor or layperson happens to come up with a non-toxic method of treating the disease for which the drug in question is the preferred option, and if that innovative natural method does no harm, and if responsible adults want to try the method…
The house comes down on the researcher’s head. The full force of “experts” and government enforcement agencies and mainstream doctors and the MSM press comes into play.
The “experts” and cronies, of course, trumpet concern for people’s health and lay claim to righteousness and ethics and science.
Sure. They’re messiahs, taking us into the medical promised-land.
Or, to put it slightly differently:
They’re scum of the Earth.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Thanks Jon, this is exactly it; how do they sleep at night!!! m.c.
That’s wonderful! The former sales manager turned snitch walks away with $280 million. Shouldn’t the money go to the people who took the drug?
With the “right” political connections, one can LITERALLY get away with murder in this sty.
Yet all the while we destroy nations who actually give a damn about their citizens enough to provide DECENT/FREE healthcare, DECENT/FREE education and provide government assistance toward the purchase of your first home upon marrying.
Those “evil”, non central bank “terrorist” nations!
Isn’t this the ONLY “exceptional” country where drugs are legally promoted to the general public?
A few more years of “common core” and most won’t be able to SPELL “exceptional”.
Sorry, all that “free” stuff destroys the individual. We can do so much better without government involvement.
This lets politicians and beaurocrats pretend they’re doing the right thing by us. To ordinary folks the size of the fines seem enormous, but are just a small price to pay for doing business.
In stark contrast to our corporate-owned judiciary, here’s a story about the late Justice Miles Lord, a maverick who more than once took the heads of powerful companies to task in his court room.
How DARE he?!?!?
http://www.startribune.com/miles-lord-judge-who-played-pivotal-role-in-minnesota-history-dies-at-97/405783746/#1
Jon
Good article. I wholly agree with the very important point you’ve made – vis-à-vis corruption of standards in the interests of profits.
My point is this. Look at all the focus on the generality “vaccines” right now, when the issue certainly (there may be others too) is Thimerosal. Who knows the details about the dreadful history of this 1932 patented Eli-Lilly product? Few “armchair” critics, I’ll bet.
The other critical issue, which I am trying to highlight in my regular comments regards fossil-fuel caused cancers, is science is great at measuring/labelling “symptoms”. But in the case of many illnesses clearing up symptoms does nothing to prohibit causes. Taking cancer as the example, I remember John Wayne “beating cancer” only for it to “spring up again”. So actually he hadn’t beaten cancer at all because doctors didn’t know where/when/what the “genus” began.
How can medical science change to move from addressing symptoms (masquerading) to coming to terms with root issues? In my opinion, this is the biggest issue the world faces vis-à-vis “health” in general.
Best
OT
How about corrupted politicians making Millions and getting away with that?
They come in broke and they get out very rich and they never go to jail.
How about that?
It’s likely working the way it was designed to work. Drug companies can’t put a drug out on the market and openly tell everyone that it can be tried for any health problem, approved or not. But a medical doctor can. Why is that? Why give doctors the right to prescribe a drug for any “off label” condition when doctors are the most ignorant about the pharmacology of a drug? What doctors are out there in their ignorance of how drugs work, thinking of trying a blood thinner drug for Parkinsons?
I doubt seriously that doctors are experimenting with drugs especially when they don’t have a clue about the pharmacology of a drug. So, why do they have the right to do just that?
Because Big Pharma put up the money and lobbying to get the law on the books to give them that right. And why did Big Pharma do that? So, they can do exactly what they are doing now….under the “guidance” and influence of the drug companies, doctors can now legally ignore a law that the drug companies could not…..and add millions/billions to the sale of any drug.
06-06-2018
@ Sean Thomas:
You’re right, the $ 280 million should go to the victims of the drug: but as the article shows, the government is too corrupt. But Beverly Brown, the former sales manager of the company, turned against her own company and testified against them in court and won the lawsuit. If every drug company employee were silent about drug company crimes; the drug companies would not even lose one penny of profits and the Public would know nothing about their crimes. Calling Beverly Brown a snitch makes you sound like a drug company troll.
@Jon Rappoport :
In this article you lay out an excellent case about why these crimes are too big to be tried in ordinary USA courts. These drug company cases should be tried in the World Court in the Hague for major Crimes Against Humanity and the prepetrators subjected to Internationally televised Public Executions on a mass scale.