The Government press charges against the company, but doesn’t press charges against anyone who was involved.

Glaxo was plead guilty in a criminal charges for misleading the government for various antidepressants. Now I find this funny, that they a) get criminally charged, b) they have to pay the Government about $1 billion for criminal fines, but yet no one goes into the slammer. Hey, Presidential Candidate Romney says “People are business”, does that ring true to Glaxo? Oh wait, they are a big business, Romney was referring to the small businesses!
In anyway, in Tuesday’s Marketplace section above the fold in The Wall Street Journal,  GlaxoSmithKline had severely mislead the government of the the legal use of the drugs. They were, according to the Journal:

• Paxil
• Wellbutrin
• and the diabetes drug Avandia.

The Journal reports that the costliest health care fraud cases has been the biggest in many years. The U.S. Government had found the company guilty as “the company piling doctors with perks such as free spa treatments, Colorado ski trips, pheasant-hunting jaunts to Europe and Madonna concert tickets” that the Justice Department said
Quoting a paragraph from the Journal:

“At a news conference on Monday, and in documents posted online, the government said Glaxo spent six years – 1998 to 2003 [sic] – unlawfully promoting Paxil for patients under 18 when the drug wasn’t approved for non-adults. It said Glaxo helped prepare an article published in a medical journal in 2001 that falsely reported Paxil had proven effective at treating depression in children in a clinical trial when the trial showed no such thing.”

In reference to the other non-authorized purposes, the government accused that Glaxo had mis promoted Wellbutrin,  “approved to solely to treat depression – for number of other reasons” such as another Viagra! The Journal quoted the government said “Glaxo sales representatives sometimes referred to Wellbutrin as ‘the happy, horny, skinny pill’ as to remind doctors of the unapproved uses.”
GlaxoSmithKline, PLC had to pay another $2 billion US dollars to to cover civil penalties such as misleading Medicaid (a US Government agency and program, hence the fines) that had mistakenly misauthroized the uses of the drugs.  Additional fines included kickbacks to doctors to prescribe nine different drugs, according to the WSJ report.
In a side bar, the Journal quotes the “76-page complaint”.

Promoted Wellbutrion SR as an antidepressant, to treat obesity or sexual disorders. Example: Hired a PR firm and paid [TV’s] Dr. Drew Pinsky to ‘build buzz’ for off-label uses”
Marketed Paxil, an antidepressant, as safe for children, despite trials that raised concerns about suicide. Example: Give free samples to child psychiatrists”

I added the boldface
Glaxo had agreed to go into a Five Step Program, seriously they need to do a “five year ‘corporate integrity agreement’ in which it pledges to specific behavior”  to change various policies such as compensation plans and show their financial statements post-charges and show where the money is going.
Takeaway
What drives me nuts, is why can’t the US Government not criminally prosecute “people” instead of just the company? Why did no one blow the whistle or get “cooperating witnesses” or get “bagmen” to ambush them. (Being from Boston, I know about mobs inside and out – as an outsider of course!)  Why didn’t the government go after the doctors who were involved in favors and didn’t get them prosecuted? This is really a sick problem, and the free market has been abused, and I really wished this was taken even to a higher level of criminal prosecution, really in the sense of throwing people into federal prison for life! People had actually died because of the suicide (a lawsuit occurred with another company I can’t remember the details.)
This is what we call “corporate prostitution” – pay someone to suck up another in order to lure what the doctor wants. What’s worse is how a doctor’s office is whored with those tissue boxes, pens and oh I can’t say any more, because that’s going to be another post alone!
In all seriousness, this is a huge issue. Paxil was given to many children, and many with PDD, HFA, Asperger’s in the late 90s and they became very unstable, more unstable than not being on Paxil. I can disclose that I am currently on Welburtrion, but the first drug I had been on was Paxil. I’ll tell you that I had countless suicide attempts, and many aggressive episodes, that I suffered with hyperventilation, especially during restraints (the ignorant/arrogant staff thought because I was fighting with them during the restraint holds, was the cause. ) Not only those cause issues, but the worst case was that I had no eyebrows or eyelashes as I had plucked them out -for a crazy reason, this medicine gave me some weird side-effects.
Part of my middle school years were tainted because I was on drugs that now were – actually illegal to take. I also was dealing with a neurologist who didn’t understand PDD type of children, but yet I went through various doctors, and my psychologist (who is a prominent voice of autism, but doesn’t posses a M.D. background) was actually giving my mother and I recommendations for various medicines, that she shouldn’t been suggesting to use period given her PhD background.
Medicine isn’t the total solution, and I will explain more later, but this is a good starting point to discuss the drug industry, the “doctors” and the smartasses of the autism community.
If you interested in this story, this appeared in Tuesday’s Marketplace section of The Wall Street Journal. I quoted directly from the print edition with my dictating skills which is good to do with reading and typing skills.