(NaturalNews)
GlaxoSmithKline employee and whistleblower Blair Hamrick has helped make
medical history. Together with his colleague Gregory Thorpe, Blair blew the
whistle on criminal practices taking place inside GlaxoSmithKline which have
now led to the largest criminal admission and financial settlement in the
history of western medicine. GSK is paying a $3 billion fine while pleading
guilty to felony crimes.
http://www.naturalnews.com/036416_GlaxoSmithKline_fraud_criminal_charges.html
Blair
recently joined Mike Adams on the Health Ranger Report for a video interview.
In this astonishing interview, Blair describes his firsthand knowledge of the
"bribery" of physicians, the push for off-label marketing of drugs
for unapproved health conditions, the illegal marketing of drugs to children,
how 80 percent of physicians were willing to be "on the take," and
other astonishing details from behind the scenes of the criminally-operated
medical mafia known as Big Pharma.
The full
video interview is available on YouTube at:
And on
TV.NaturalNews.com at:
Blair
Hamrick is also being interviewed on live national radio by Mike Adams on the
Alex Jones Show, Tuesday, July 17th, beginning at 12 noon Eastern / 9 am
Pacific (www.InfoWars.com). Those who miss the live broadcast can download the
audio file from the Alex Jones Show archives at www.PrisonPlanet.TV
Below,
we've published selected transcribed statements from Blair Hamrick as revealed
in the above videos.
The worst
decision ever made by any drug company
The $3
billion settlement was achieved with the help of the law firm known as Kenney
& McCafferty (http://quitam-lawyer.com), specializing in whistleblower cases.
"When
our clients were forced out of their marketing positions, GlaxoSmithKline
('GSK') had proof of illegal off-label prescription drug marketing. Our clients
properly reported those marketing misdeeds to management in 2001. An ensuing
GSK internal investigation verified their allegations, but the company took no
action, choosing hefty profits over compliance and patient safety," said
whistleblower attorney Tavy Deming of Kenney & McCafferty.
(http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/glaxosmithklines-gsk)
"GSK
could have saved hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion or more dollars of the
$3 billion it paid today by following through on the combined Human Resources /
Corporate Compliance investigation they launched. Instead they ignored evidence
of improper marketing and physician kickbacks. When you look at the detail and
accuracy of Greg Thorpe's written complaints distributed to the highest levels
of Glaxo it's almost surreal that the company took no corrective action. Now
more than a decade later, GSK is essentially admitting that Thorpe had been
right in 2001," Kenney said. "It's been a very, very, very long 10
years for whistleblowers Thorpe and Blair Hamrick."
Court
documents reveal even more details
The
following PDF document contains selected pages from the "seventh amended
complaint" filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, where
Gregory Thorpe and Blair Hamrick sued Smith Kline Beecham and GlaxoSmithKline.
This
document shows some of the GENERAL ALLEGATIONS against GlaxoSmithKline. View
the full document here:
These
allegations are vast and disturbing. They include:
From 1997
to the present and continuing, GSK's marketing plan, devised at a senior
executive level, has been to "Exploit the Bolus" of government-funded
healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Tricare, with the direct and intended
effect of causing the submission of false claims to such programs as identified
herein.
GSK has
illegally and fraudulently promoted and marketed the sale of its drugs for off
label, non-medically accepted uses... As part of this scheme, GSK overtly and
aggressively targeted physicians identified by GSK's prescription tracking
methods to have the largest volumes of patients enrolled in government-funded
healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Tricare.
GSK has
paid illegal remuneration (i.e. kickbacks) to physicians and other health care
providers with the purpose and intent of inducing those physicians and
healthcare providers to prescribe GSK drugs in return in violation of the
federal Anti-Kickback law and the analogous anti-kickback laws of the Plaintiff
States.
Top level
GSK managers and executives, including but not limited to GSK's Chief Executive
Officer J.P. Garnier, current President of Pharmaceutical Operations David
Stout, Vice Chairman of Pharmaceuticals (and former President of Pharmaceutical
Operations) Robert A. Ingram, Senior Vice President Stan Hull, Regional
Director Mike Bennett, and Vice President and Head of Corporate Compliance
Arjun Rajaratnam, have been aware of GSK's illegal marketing schemes and have
played an active role in supporting and promoting these schemes.
Astonishing
quotes from whistleblower Blair Hamrick
The
following are all quotes from Blair Hamrick, as found in this Health Ranger
Report interview with Mike Adams. Watch the full video at:
How it all
began:
It started
out, we were discussing where the company was going and how the company had
taken a turn asking us to do unethical and illegal things. Selling drugs off
label. Selling drugs to children that the drug says specifically in its package
insert this drug is not indicated for children under 18, but they were asking
us specifically to sell it to children.
Being
trained to sell drugs off label:
When we
would have regional meetings, we would train on how to sell off label. How to
find niche products for instance, like Wellbutrin, it was indicated for
depression, but then apparently they were not satisfied with the amount of
money they were making, so they started pushing it for weight loss, for
pediatrics, for sexual dysfunction. You've probably heard the quote, this catch
phrase went around to doctors you could only see for a brief second. Hey doc,
remember Wellbutrin is the happy horny skinny drug. These are catch phrases
that drills the name of the drug in the back of the doctor's mind, and they get
duped into writing prescriptions for a product that may not be appropriate.
That was
for when you only had a minute to talk to the doctor. Remember Wellbutrin it's
the happy horny skinny drug. Now, if you actually got the opportunity to speak
to the physician for a sit-down appointment, you may then start talking about
things like intimacy and depression, and how with the competitor drugs like
Paxil, patients have problems with their libido, and you should use Wellbutrin
because it increases the libido, so depending on what your primary drug was to
promote, we were trained on uncovering what doctor's objections were and then
to come back, and spin it so that the doctor would start writing your drug.
About
off-label marketing:
When a
company actively markets a drug that is not indicated for a specific disease
state, that is a violation of the law. ...And it's commonplace.
About
spinning side effects:
With those
studies, you're trained to focus on how well it works, but don't focus on the
side effects so much. You don't really want to bring that one up. If they ask
the questions, then you can address it, but let's spin it in a very positive
manner.
[We would
say] well, doctor, the insomnia [side effect] is transient. So it's only a
problem for the first couple of days. Once your patients acclimate to the drug,
the insomnia will fade away. So it's a spin machine.
For
instance the drug Advair for asthma. They came out with the S.M.A.R.T. data,
showed an increase incidence of death in African American people. So the study
was stopped, they had black box warnings in the package insert, we were trained
to tell the doctors well, doctor, you know most people of lower socioeconomic
conditions are not compliant with their medications, so with Advair you don't
have to worry about your patients not taking their inhaled corticosteroid
because Advair is a combination of an inhaled corticosteroid and a long-acting
beta-agonist. So it's always a spin, so they were basically, according to our
complaint, taking a very negative dangerous outcome of a drug [study] and
trying to spin it as positive.
About
corporate responsibility for products that harm consumers:
When you look
at a drug like Wellbutrin, and it has a 0.1% incidence of seizure, that's one
in a thousand, but if you're that one person that has a seizure, it's 100
percent [for you]. Where [we] drew the line is realizing that if a child has a
seizure, who's responsible? Is it the doctor? Is it me? Is it the company?
Where does the buck stop? And unfortunately in the corporate world, there are
so many veils of protection that... they're a corporate defendant which is
nothing more than a table full of attorneys, and nobody pays the price.
It's
offensive. In my opinion, they have no regard whatsoever for precious human
life. ...But I have suffered nothing compared to a parent whose child has
committed suicide on Paxil. Imagine how horrifying that is. It's so repulsive.
You're just talking about a bad company run by bad people, in my opinion.
About
holding drug company CEOs criminally responsible for their acts:
When will
the public be outraged and say enough is enough? Because this kind of behavior
will continue until somebody goes to prison. They're hurting our children. It's
offensive, it's immoral, it's unethical, and for a company to have the slogan
of letting people do more, and live longer and do better, and then hide behind
that slogan [while] you're telling your sales reps to sell off-label to
children... how evil does it get? It just doesn't get any more evil than that.
Illegal
kickbacks and the bribery of doctors
I was
promoted when I was with Glaxo, after about two years with Glaxo, to a
specialty position, I was called a therapeutic area specialist. So one of my
jobs was to recruit local speakers, to become trained on the drugs to go and
speak to other physicians. You're taking them down the primrose path of
payoffs.
First, they
have to start writing the drug, and if they're not writing the drug enough, you
have to get on them about that, then when they do a speaking program at $2,000
for 30 minutes -- anywhere from $500 to $2500 for a half-hour talk -- then if
the message they are sending is not exactly the way you want it to go, then you
coach the doctor about here's our marketing message, this is the point we want
to get out to other physicians... so yes, I saw it firsthand.
I even had
doctors who, when I walked into their office and they found out I was the
therapeutic area specialist, they were like hey, can you set me up with the
speaking program? Because it's extra money. There are even doctors out there,
they make so much money on the speaking tours, they start hiring nurse
practitioners or other doctors to see their patients, and they may only go into
the office two or three times a month. Because they're out speaking. It's so
lucrative. ...[they can make] $6,000 in one day to do three half-hour
presentations. ...And most of the slide shows come from the company marketing
departments.
At the time
I left Glaxo, they had over 40,000 speakers on their speakers' bureau.
According
to court documents, GlaxoSmithKline had actually developed a network of
"speakers" (i.e. primarily doctors receiving kickbacks for writing
prescriptions) totaling 49,000.
Sources for
this story include:
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