Friday, April 27, 2007

Pfizer - Genotropin: minding their P's and Q's

Jim at Brandweek NRX has the scoop:

The DOJ has described for the first time in real detail how the feds believe Pharmacia’s Genotropin/formulary kickback scheme worked, according to a memo in Massachussetts federal court (see download below). The scheme—planned at a meeting in Skokie—increased Pharmacia’s sales of painkillers at the cost of lowered standards of care for the sick kids who needed Genotropin, in the view of Pharmacia executives described in the memo.

Pfizer—or rather, “Pharmacia & Upjohn,” the now-defunct company that Pfizer acquired a couple of years ago—formally
pled guilty on Wednesday in the Genotropin marketing kickback case.

The plea makes concrete what Brandweek
reported a few weeks ago.

However, on Tuesday the DOJ filed its sentencing memorandum, which contained the most detailed description yet of how Pharmacia conspired with an unnamed “Company Q” in a kickback scheme that would increase sales of Pharmacia drugs by short-changing kids with genetic conditions that needed Genotropin, Pharmacia's (and now Pfizer’s) human growth hormone brand.

Read the rest here.

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