Pfizer guilty for Neurontin racketeering

Courtesy of Business Week

Pfizer Inc. violated U.S. racketeering law in the marketing of its epilepsy drug Neurontin and must pay $142.1 million in damages, a jury decided. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals claimed in a monthlong trial in federal court in Boston that Pfizer illegally promoted Neurontin for unapproved uses. The insurer said it was misled into believing migraines and bipolar disorder were among the conditions that could be treated effectively with Neurontin, approved in 1993 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for epilepsy.

The jury was shocked by evidence that Pfizer knowingly marketed Neurontin for off-label uses without proof that it was effective. All of the five jurors interviewed after the verdict said they agreed that Pfizer had demonstrated “a pattern of fraud” in marketing the drug. Jurors today found that Pfizer violated racketeering laws with respect to four of the five off-label uses in question. The company’s own studies showed that Neurontin was no more effective than a placebo in treating those conditions, though Pfizer never told doctors or patients about the findings, Kaiser said.

The Justice Department claimed in a 2004 sentencing memorandum that Warner-Lambert’s marketing increased off-label sales from 15 percent of all Neurontin prescriptions in 1994, its first year on the market, to 94 percent, or $2.12 billion, of Pfizer’s Neurontin sales in 2002.

Bonnie - racketeering charges are usually reserved for mobsters, are they not? During the period of time where the off-label use of Neurontin was at its zenith, I saw too many clients exhibit awful side effects with no improvement in the symptoms it was supposedly going to ameliorate. I am consistently amazed at the depths that this industry can delve.