Covid Journal, November 2, 2020
The Future Of Humanity Is In Hands of These People?
I came across this site (Violation Tracker) and it records penalties that pharmaceutical companies around the world have had to pay for many reasons. Since 2000, there have been more than $41 BILLION US in penalties, with nearly 1,000 records concerning payments having to be made. Many of the companies that have been working on vaccines or treatment for … humanity … have been found guilty IN THE LAST YEAR of crimes including false claims, price fixing, kickbacks, bribery and so on.
And this is for the US ONLY.
What inspired this research was a report from the Daily Mail in the UK that showed how an insider and whistleblower has exposed the absolute bottomless greed of many people in the pharmaceutical industry.
From the article:
- Oswald Bilotta told NBC News how he thought he’d landed his dream job when he was employed as a sales representative for Novatis Pharmaceuticals in 1999
- However, quickly the proverbial rose-tinted lenses lost their gleam
- Just over a decade later, Bilotta would play a central role in a huge federal investigation into kickbacks at Novatis, wearing a wire for prosecutors
- The Justice Department announced a $678M settlement with the company over improper inducements it made to doctors to prescribe the company’s drugs
- The deal may also make Bilotta a multi-millionaire, as he could be set to land up to $75 million under federal whistleblower laws
Here’s more about the case:
Novartis was accused by prosecutors of having hosted tens of thousands of speaker programs and events, which the Department of Justice said were used to bribe physicians.
In one example, the company chose doctors who already prescribed high volumes of Novartis drugs to serve as paid speakers, as a means of inducing them to continue writing or write more prescriptions.
Representatives often dropped doctors from the speaker programs if they failed to increase prescriptions, the Department of Justice said.
‘For more than a decade, Novartis spent hundreds of millions of dollars on so-called speaker programs, including speaking fees, exorbitant meals and top-shelf alcohol that were nothing more than bribes to get doctors across the country to prescribe Novartis’ drugs,’ said acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss for the Southern District of New York.
The Department of Justice said the activity was the result of decisions made by top management at Novartis’ North American headquarters in New Jersey.
… Novartis’ main priority was the keep high-prescribing doctors happy, Bilotta said. At meetings with superiors, sales representatives would be handed hundreds of dollars in American Express gift cards to give to doctors, he said.
Apparently, they’re a different company today. That’s a relief.
If the fate of humanity hinges on a decent vaccine or treatment for Covid and other diseases, can humanity ask that decent people be in charge?
For the record, I believe in vaccines, modern health and science as well as efficient markets. However, if we are to believe the numbers and this is truly a global pandemic worth stopping the planet for (economically, socially, psychologically, politically, environmentally), I say we push for a nationalized/internationalized publicly-owned pharmaceutical company that has a mandate of developing a vaccine or treatment for Covid and other communicable diseases.
WITHOUT special interest groups involved.
The fate of humanity hangs in the hands of the companies cited above. Are we really comfortable with that?