McClatchy: Drug research routinely suppressed

[boutons_deux]

$1B is still nobody's pocket change

Brill calculates J&J may in the end have to pay a total of $6 billion in settlements for its misconduct. But he estimates the company made $18 billion in profits on Risperdal, just within the United States (on $20 billion in domestic sales, and there was $10 billion more in sales abroad).

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/opinion/nicholas-kristof-when-crime-pays-jjs-drug-risperdal.html?_r=0

For BigCorp, Big Crime Pays Big. (eg, BigFinance now bigger, wealthier, more powerful, more influential after causing the criminal Banksters' Great Depression)

[Winehole23]

the cost of doing business is newsworthy in this case, even if it doesn't hurt or deter J&J.

also, it's a marker for the public at large of serious wrongdoing and unethical business practices.

[Winehole23]

public opinion and legal process aren''t powerless. they can and have ruined companies. not saying this will happen here, but one never knows.

[boutons_deux]

the cost of doing business is newsworthy in this case, even if it doesn't hurt or deter J&J.

also, it's a marker for the public at large of serious wrongdoing and unethical business practices.

no effective hurt, no deterrence, Corporate-Americans are teflon coated

the public at large doesn't care because the public has no way to hurt or deter BigCorporate-American criminals. They can be outraged, maybe just shrug, but they know nothing will change. And hope they aren't in the next crop of BigCorp victims.

BigCorp s America, and American can't un themselves.

[Winehole23]

J&J rolled Texas and jacked up Medicaid payments:

The story begins when J&J’s previous antipsychotic medicine ended its patent life, so sales plunged as generics gained market share. In 1994, J&J released Risperdal as a successor, but the Food and Drug Administration said it wasn’t necessarily better than the previous version and in any case was effective primarily for schizophrenia in adults. That’s a small market, and J&J was more ambitious. It wanted a blockbuster with annual revenues of at least $1 billion.


So J&J reinvented Risperdal as a drug for a broad range of problems, targeting everyone from seniors with dementia to children with autism.


The company also turned to corporate welfare: It paid doctors and others consulting fees and successfully lobbied for Texas to adopt Risperdal in place of generics. This meant that the state paid $3,000 a year for each Medicaid patient taking it, rather than $250 a year for each, Brill says.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/op...risperdal.html