In their quest for the next big drug discovery, reports the Springfield, Missouri News-Leader , pharmaceutical companies are increasingly teaming up with some of the nation’s top universities, recruiting campus scientists as partners and offering schools multimillion-dollar deals to work on experimental drugs in development. Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine criticized the pharmaceutical industry’s new coziness with major campuses. “What it does,” she said, “is to blur the boundaries between academic medical centers and investor-owned companies”.
Corporations need penalties that hurt
In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik writes, “If you’re concerned about corporate crime, 2012 looked like a pretty successful year for the good guys.” The Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen paid $762 million in fines and penalties and pleaded guilty to a federal charge related to illegal marketing of its anemia drug Aranesp. Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline and Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories paid $3 billion and $1.5 billion in government penalties, respectively, in connection with their off-label promotions of blockbuster drugs. Glaxo’s was the biggest drug company settlement in history. To the companies, however, these big numbers are just chump change.
Supreme Court to consider ‘pay for delay’ deals keeping generic drugs off the market
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether so-called pay for delay settlements that temporarily keep generic competitors out of the market are lawful in patent litigation, reports the ABA Journal. In “pay for delay” cases, brand-name drug companies pay a would-be generic competitor to drop a challenge of the brand-name patent and to keep the generic version of the drug off the market for a specified time period. The FTC maintains that such arrangements cost consumers $3.5 billion a year.
The takers: State and local governments subsidize corporations
In his campaign for President, Mitt Romney famously charged that 47% of the American population paid no federal income tax and “are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” A new investigation by the New York Times identifies another category of taker: the corporations who take more than $80 billion in subsidies each year from state and local governments. According to the Times, these governments award $9.1 million in corporate subsidies every hour. More than 5,000 companies have been awarded a total of more than $1 million each in local subsidies. Using the database of state and local government subsidies to corporations created by the New York Times, the table below shows 25 selected companies frequently mentioned in Corporations and Health Watch that received more than $1 million in subsidies. The largest recipient of local government subsidies was the automobile industry. The top three US car companies alone received $4.75 billion in local subsidies in the period reviewed by the New York Times. Most troubling, the Times investigation noted:
A portrait arises of mayors and governors who are desperate to create jobs, outmatched by multinational corporations and short on tools to fact-check what companies tell them. Many of the officials said they feared that companies would move jobs overseas if they did not get subsidies in the United States. Over the years, corporations have increasingly exploited that fear, creating a high-stakes bazaar where they pit local officials against one another to get the most lucrative packages. States compete with other states, cities compete with surrounding suburbs, and even small towns have entered the race with the goal of defeating their neighbors.
The Times further observed that for many communities, “the payouts add up to a substantial chunk of their overall spending… Oklahoma and West Virginia give up amounts equal to about one-third of their budgets, and Maine allocates nearly a fifth.” As national, state and local officials debate about how best to balance revenues and expenses, corporate subsidies deserve further scrutiny. CHW readers can visit the Times searchable database to examine their states’ record or the subsidies received by corporations they are tracking.
|
|
Name of Company |
Total Subsidy |
Number of Grants |
Number of States |
|
General Motors |
$1.77 billion |
208 |
16 |
|
|
Ford |
$1.58 billion |
119 |
8 |
|
|
Chrysler |
$1.4 billion |
14 |
3 |
|
|
Orca Bay Seafood |
$296 million |
4 |
1 |
|
|
Fresh Direct |
$131 million |
9 |
1 |
|
|
Archer Daniels Midland |
$110 million |
23 |
6 |
|
|
Daimler |
$101 million |
24 |
8 |
|
|
Toyota Motor Company |
$96.5 million |
16 |
5 |
|
|
Pfizer |
$92.9 million |
44 |
9 |
|
|
Walmart Stores |
$80.5 million |
176 |
23 |
|
|
Merck and Company |
$60.7 million |
18 |
5 |
|
|
Coca Cola Bottling |
$49 million |
61 |
16 |
|
|
Diageo |
$40 million |
7 |
2 |
|
|
Abbott Laboratories |
$14.7 million |
21 |
9 |
|
|
Pepsi Cola(various franchises) |
$13.3 million |
23 |
9 |
|
|
Jim Beam Brands |
$10.8 million |
7 |
1 |
|
|
Philip Morris USA |
$8.06 million |
5 |
2 |
|
|
Remington Arms Company |
$8.32 million |
13 |
3 |
|
|
Millercoors |
$7.46 |
7 |
4 |
|
|
Smith & Wesson |
$6.16 million |
9 |
1 |
|
|
Lorillard Tobacco Company |
$5.5 million |
2 |
1 |
|
|
Anheuser-Busch |
$4.62 million |
2 |
2 |
|
|
Cargill |
$4.4 million |
9 |
5 |
|
|
Reynolds Tobacco Company |
$3.09 million |
1 |
1 |
|
|
Pernod Ricard |
$1 million |
1 |
1 |
Federal judges rule that ban on off-label marketing violates freedom of speech
The New York Times reports that a federal appeals court threw out the conviction of a drug company sales representative who sold a drug for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In a case that could have broad ramifications for the pharmaceutical industry, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan ruled that the ban on so-called off-label marketing violated the representative’s freedom of speech. In recent years, drug companies have paid billions of dollars in penalties to the federal government after being accused of marketing blockbuster drugs for off-label uses.
FDA calls for new regulations for drug compounders
The New York Times reports that the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration on called on Congress to empower the agency to better police compounding pharmacies like the one at the center of a national meningitis outbreak. But Republican lawmakers pushed back, arguing that the agency has enough authority, leaving it unclear whether the House would support efforts to increase oversight. The Times had previously disclosed that despite two decades of dire health warnings, the industry has until now fought off tougher federal oversight with the help of powerful allies in Congress.
Towards a new model for pharmaceutical research
An editorial in the November issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization claims that despite considerable investments in research and development (R & D), and the availability of powerful scientific and technological tools, innovation in the pharmaceutical industry has declined drastically in the last decade. In addition, most of the new molecules introduced into the market do not entail genuine therapeutic innovations or target the diseases that prevail in developing countries. Most importantly, the prices charged for new pharmaceutical products are unaffordable to the poor and, increasingly, to patients and social security systems, even in developed countries. The editorial describes a new effort to start multilateral negotiations for the possible adoption of a binding convention on health R & D.
Abbott suspends giving gifts to doctors in India
Reuters reports that Abbott Laboratories has instructed its sales representatives in India not to give gifts to doctors, who are prohibited by local law from accepting them, a practice that has been used as a bargaining chip by companies wanting a piece of the country’s burgeoning healthcare market. Public health experts say gift-giving leads to dangerous over-prescribing and unnecessary use of expensive medications when cheaper versions are available. That can be a significant burden for the 400 million people in India who live on less than $1.25 a day.
European Court Criticizes EU regulatory agencies on oversight of conflicts of interest
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) has sent a highly critical message to four of the EU agencies in a report published today, condemning their failure to manage conflicts of interest adequately. The Court has carried out an investigation into conflict of interests policies at the European aviation safety agency (EASA), European chemicals agency (ECHA), European food safety agency (EFSA) and the European Medicines agency (EMA). The EASA came out worst in the score report, but significant shortcomings were identified at EMA and EFSA as well.
Meningitis for sale: US pharmacists point to sketchy corporate practices
In its continuing coverage of the meningitis outbreak Reuters reports that workers from a Massachusetts company owned by the drug manufacturer linked a recent US meningitis outbreak claimed they helped prepare dangerous narcotics in unsafe conditions. A series of emails revealed the connection between the two firms. Technicians and pharmacists at Ameridose, a drug manufacturing company neighboring the New England Compounding Center (NECC), which shares owners with Ameridose, told the New York Times they had safety concerns about the drugs they were producing.
Corporations and Health Watch 