United States Attorney General Eric Holder stated referring to AstraZeneca's Seroquel Settlement with DOJ: "These were not victimless crimes" April 27th, 2010
AstraZeneca Seroquel Injury Lawsuit - Year End Update & Review 2011
It’s the same deafening silence coming from the plaintiff law firms as 2011 draws to an ominous close. There has been lot’s of baseless bluster about final offer packets being sent out? Some more rumors about some of the plaintiff firms mailing out checks to the chagrin of many unsatisfied and angry injured parties. The charade has been unmasked.
It appears the plaintiff law firms have once again crawled into their profiteering black holes, while ignoring the concerns and complaints of their clients that they have both a sworn professional & ethical duty to serve. Injured parties are still being left in the dark about any & all particulars that have gone into these “secret” settlement negotiations. Everything is very hush-hush and being kept from those who (injured parties) have the most to lose from these questionable and dubious plaintiff law firm practices.
Those who have not signed onto this nefarious backroom settlement scam are now sitting back wondering, watching, & waiting for their law firms to drop the ball, their cases, and send them packing.
This is when the expected & much anticipated wave of legal malpractice suits should begin in earnest. The first cannon ball shots can almost being heard splashing across the legal-ship bow; as a war and its many battles surely lay ahead.
From those I have communicated with regarding this litigation; injured parties have not been given even the simple choice of whether to accept this token insult offer or not in any of the settlement offers or paperwork. This settlement in essence is being forced upon or ram rotted down their throats of injured parties against their will & best interest by greedy law firms that are solely looking out for their own financial interest at this juncture.
Injured party appeals & voiced concerns have been ignored and dismissed at every turn (a couple of cases have been highlighted on this Blog in an earlier post). Informational inquiries have been met with repeated resistance; in many cases misinformation & open hostility. In fact, many plaintiff law firms with little doubt have been shown to be actively working in an oppositional/adversarial role to those they are supposed to advocate for & represent. The vast majority of plaintiff law firms in the Seroquel Litigation obviously have not worked in the best interest of their clients. Shall we have to once again remind everyone that is these law firms’ solemn charge and most basic legal obligation?
What we have going on today is an unconscionable miscarriage of justice occurring right before our eyes. Innocent Injured parties are asking again that the Department of Justice investigate this ongoing travesty of unscrupulous practices being perpetrated upon victims of legal & corporate impropriety. The American Bar Association should be taking the lead in examining these ambulance chaser law firm profiteers, while holding them professionally accountable for their detestable actions; yet, they appear to have buried their heads in the sand accepting these blatant unethical legal practices & corruption to continue unchallenged.
Does the American public have to be reminded that a corrupted, dysfunctional, and biased legal process/system undermines the very basic principles of our Republic; while leading us down an inevitable darkened path toward oppressive governing tyranny & resulting societal anarchy?
The time is now to draw the line in the sand, and to make a stand for what is right. Change will not happen without us taking action and making our own personal sacrifice. The only question remaining is who is able & willing to finally step up to the plate & fight for what is right, just, and in the best interest of us all.
What can you do?
1)Reject the “supposed” Final Offer – It’s your Choice…
2)Force your law firms hand; demand a trial or to renegotiation of this settlement…
3)If your law firm drops you as a client or refuses to listen; seek legal counsel to represent you in legal malpractice litigation against these firms.
4)File complaints with the Department of Justice
5)Write and file complaints with the Court
6)File complaints with your State & National Bar Association
7)Contact, Write, or Call you’re Congressional and Senate representatives: demand an investigation….Do not allow AstraZeneca to be rewarded for the purposeful maiming & killing of many tens of thousands all in the name of unquenchable corporate greed.
8)The only way to assure that these kinds of corporate crimes and legal injustices will continue; is to do nothing…
9)Remember, you get the last word & final say on any settlement; ***not the law firm***...Do not enrich these unscrupulous law firms for not serving your best interest…
10)For those Lawyers reading! It’s far past time to hold your peers accountable!
Speak Out!! Make Your Voice Heard!! Be Persistent!!
Brownies laced with the antipsychotic Seroquel were given to a teacher's aid and 2 classmates according to this article, the brownies were the gift that keeps on giving from a senior at a New Milford High School in CT.
In the past couple of days many readers may have come across a couple of headlines news articles highlighting & confirming how little has really changed when it comes to the pharmaceutical criminal cartels marketing of poisons such as Seroquel for massive profits & horrifying results. Yet, the body count continues to rise, and still AstraZeneca & others go about the nasty business of running their dubious operations as if it was just simply "Business as Usual". Now we have dog & pony puppet show Senate hearings giving some mouth air time to the ongoing carnage where very little has been done, quite obviously far far to late...
As they say; read it and weep... no one is really talking or thinking about the victims; they are the forgotten throw away lives that just get buried somewhere underneath the headline pronouncements of meaningless big dollars fines and hollow accountability promise banter; it's always all about the money... that's the up side down and backwards sad real world reality of our government & failed enforcement bodies in America.
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Inspector Highlights Psych Drug Use Among Elderly
Published December 01, 2011
Associated Press
Government inspectors told lawmakers Wednesday that Medicare officials need to do more to stop doctors from prescribing powerful psychiatric drugs to nursing home patients with dementia, an unapproved practice that has flourished despite repeated government warnings.
So-called antipsychotic drugs are designed to help control hallucinations, delusions and other abnormal behavior in people suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but they're also given to hundreds of thousands of elderly nursing home patients in the U.S. to pacify aggressive behavior related to dementia. Drugs like AstraZeneca's Seroquel and Eli Lilly's Zyprexa are known for their sedative effect, often putting patients to sleep.
But the drugs can also increase the risk of death in seniors, prompting the Food and Drug Administration to issue multiple warnings against prescribing the drugs for dementia.
Antipsychotics raise blood sugar and cholesterol, often resulting in weight gain. An inspector for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told the Senate Committee on Aging that the federal government's Medicare program should begin penalizing nursing homes that inappropriately prescribe antipsychotics, according to written testimony obtained by the Associated Press.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides health coverage to nearly 80 million senior, poor or disabled Americans.
HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson proposed that Medicare force nursing homes to pay for drugs that are prescribed inappropriately, and potentially bar nursing homes that don't use antipsychotics appropriately from Medicare.
A report by Levinson's office issued in May found that 83 percent of Medicare claims for antipsychotics were for residents with dementia, the condition specifically warned against in the drugs' labeling. Fourteen percent of all nursing home residents, nearly 305,000 patients, were prescribed antipsychotics. The HHS Inspector General's office Medicare claims during a 2007 six month period.
Doctors are permitted to prescribe drugs for off-label uses, though it is illegal for drug companies to promote uses that haven't been cleared by the FDA. In recent years several pharmaceutical companies have paid huge fines to the Department of Justice in cases involving off-label marketing of antipsychotics.
In January 2009, Eli Lilly & Co. Inc. agreed to plead guilty and pay $1.4 billion for illegal promotion of Zyprexa, including marketing to nursing home doctors. The company told its sales representatives to use the slogan "5 at 5," to persuade doctors that giving 5 milligrams of the drug at 5 p.m. would make dementia patients sleep through the night.
AstraZeneca PLC has paid nearly $600 million in two separate settlements with federal and state prosecutors over alleged off-label promotion of its drug Seroquel.
More than 8% of children in foster care have received antipsychotic medication, and just over one quarter of those in foster care who also receive disability benefits take these drugs, according to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics.
The question is why? Children in foster care have typically been neglected or abused — indeed, simply removing a young child from his or her parents, even abusive ones, is in itself traumatic — so, not surprisingly, kids in foster care are more likely to suffer from psychiatric and behavioral problems than those who have stable families. Previous data suggest that foster-care children are about twice as likely as those outside the system to receive psychiatric medications.
Whether these problems are leading to higher rates of antipsychotic use, however, is not clear. "I think we have clinicians facing some very challenging situations," says Susan dosReis, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and lead author of the study. "But we don't have information as to why the prescribers decided on these medications for [these particular] youths."
The numbers suggest that the influence of pharmaceutical company marketing cannot be overlooked. Ninety-nine percent of youth receiving antipsychotic medications in the study were given atypical antipsychotics — the newer generation of these drugs, which are expensive and mostly unavailable in generic form and have been heavily advertised.
All of the major manufacturers of these drugs have been fined by the Food and Drug Administration for illegal marketing practices — in part, for marketing the drugs for unapproved use in children — with some convicted of criminal charges.
Eli Lilly, which manufactures the atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa, paid out $1.42 billion in 2009 — $615 million of that to settle criminal charges. The charges against Lilly involved selling Zyprexa to doctors for use in children, despite the fact that it was not approved for this age group.
Bristol Myers Squibb paid $515 million in 2007 to settle charges that it also illegally pushed its antipsychotic Abilify to child psychiatrists. Pfizer paid out $301 million in a similar case related to its drug Geodon. AstraZeneca paid out $520 million to settle charges over the drug Seroquel. In all of these cases, the drugs were sold for unapproved use in youth.
The new study by dosReis and colleagues included records of more than 600,000 children enrolled in Medicaid in 2003, including those in foster care, those receiving disability benefits for mental diagnoses, and those on the welfare program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Overall, nearly 3% of all youth on Medicaid received at least one prescription for an antipsychotic medication that year, which is itself a high proportion, especially given that the main condition that antipsychotics are approved to treat —schizophrenia — is extremely rare in children. The rate of schizophrenia in children under 12 is an estimated 2 cases per 1 million children; it affects fewer than 1% of older teens. Antipsychotics are also approved to treat bipolar disorder, a diagnosis that is highly controversial in children. Some studies suggest that it affects 0.2% to 0.4 % of children, and up to 1% of adolescents.
And yet, between 1994 and 2003, rates of bipolar diagnoses in youth under 19 rose by a factor of more than 40, according to the National Institute on Mental Health. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that this rise occurred during the period when atypical antipsychotics were being illegally marketed for children.
Indeed, most of the antipsychotics used in foster-care youth were for conditions that the drugs were not approved to treat. Fifty-three percent of prescriptions were written for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition that is ordinarily managed with drugs that have the opposite pharmacological effects as antipsychotics. The stimulant medications like Adderall and Ritalin, widely used for ADHD, tend to increase levels of dopamine, while antipsychotics tend to decrease it.
Moreover, 38% of youth in foster care and 34% of foster-care youth receiving disability benefits received simultaneous prescriptions for more than one atypical antipsychotic, for more than three months — a practice that the researchers said "has demonstrated greater adverse effects with only marginal benefits." Worryingly, black youth were 27% more likely to receive two or more antipsychotics than whites.
"Essentially, medications like antipsychotics can help with mood instability and aggressivity," says dosReis, explaining that the drugs are often used to treat symptoms rather than conditions. Very little research is available on medication use in children to guide these practices.
"One of the things I would like to see come out of this research is starting to think about monitoring and evaluating the quality of care [these children are receiving]. We're not supporting or condoning these practices. One extreme says that no one should get these medications, and that's as irrational as saying we should be using more," she says.
The risks of long-term prescribing of atypical antipsychotics to children, whose brains are still developing, are not known. What is known, however, is that the drugs cause severe weight gain in children, and that taking more than one antipsychotic drug may double, even quintuple, the risk of diabetes in youth. In adults, the weight gain associated with use of just one antipsychotic medication increase the risk of diabetes two- to four-fold, which has serious deleterious consequences for long-term health.
Although children in foster care may be genetically and environmentally at higher risk for mental illness, the disproportionately widespread use of antipsychotics in this group is troubling. "This study confirms the need for developmentally and trauma-informed practices in the vulnerable foster-care population," says Dr. Bruce Perry, founder of the ChildTrauma Academy. "Misunderstanding the pervasive effects of abuse and neglect leads to the mislabeling of behavioral and emotional symptoms in these children and then to overmedication." (Full disclosure: Dr. Perry is my co-author on two books.)
"The frustrating reality is that there are many evidence-based non-pharmacological interventions that have proven effectiveness and have no adverse effects," Perry says. Sadly, however, no one is spending billions to push them.
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Not enough evidence! Read this disturbing testimony before the Senate & Congress,
Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters onMedicaid, a new study suggests.
The report, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the first to investigate how often youngsters in foster care are given two antipsychotic drugs at once, the authors said. The drugs includeRisperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa — among other so-called major tranquilizers — which were developed for schizophrenia but are now used as all-purpose drugs for almost any psychiatric symptoms.
“The kids in foster care may come from bad homes, but they do not have the sort of complex medical issues that those in the disabled population do,” said Susan dosReis, an associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the lead author.
The implication, Dr. dosReis and other experts said: Doctors are treating foster children’s behavioral problems with the same powerful drugs given to people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. “We simply don’t have evidence to support this kind of use, especially in young children,” Dr. dosReis said.
In recent years, doctors and policy makers have grown concerned about high rates of overall psychiatric drug use in the foster care system, the government-financed program that provides temporary living arrangements for 400,000 to 500,000 children and adolescents.
Previous studies have found that children in foster care receive psychiatric medications at about twice the rate among children outside the system.
The new study focused on one of the most powerful classes of drugs, antipsychotics. It found that about 2 percent of foster children took at least one such drug, even though schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which the drugs are approved, are extremely rare in young children.
“It’s a significant and important finding, and it should prompt states to improve the quality of care in this area,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University who did not contribute to the research.
In the study, mental health researchers analyzed 2003 Medicaid records of 637,924 minors from an unidentified mid-Atlantic state who were either in foster care, getting disability benefits for a diagnosis like severe autism or bipolar disorder, or in a program calledTemporary Assistance for Needy Families. All of these programs draw on Medicaid financing. The investigators found that 16,969, or about 3 percent of the total, had received at least one prescription for an antipsychotic drug.
Yet among these, it was the foster children who most often got more than one such prescription at the same time: 9.2 percent, versus 6.8 percent among the children on disability, and just 2.5 percent of those in the needy families program.
Antipsychotic drugs, the authors said, also cause rapid weight gain and increase the risk for metabolic problems in many people, an effect that may be amplified by the use of two at once.
Doctors who treat such children are aware of the trade-offs and often prescribe lower doses of the medications as a result. And when they add a second such drug, it is often to counteract side effects of the first medication.
Still, the relatively high rates of these drug combinations in such a young and vulnerable group have prompted policy makers across the country to take notice. A consortium of 16 states, in collaboration with Rutgers University, has drawn up guidelines to improve care for foster children and others dependent on state aid.
“The psychiatrists who are treating these kids on the front lines are not doing it for money; there are very low reimbursement rates from Medicaid,” said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, a mental health services researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. “There’s enormous anguish because everyone knows that this is not what we should be doing for these kids. We as a society simply haven’t made the investment in psychosocial treatments, and so we are forced to rely on psychotropic drugs to carry the burden.”
$$$$$$$ That's some burden you're carrying.What is the next step? generic version, it's cheaper than name brand and we can still bill Medicaid the same.Kids? what kids?
This could be coming to a pharmacy near you: AstraZeneca and Targacept(a stem from RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co) are combining efforts to bring an nicotine receptor antidepresssant to the table, though the early returns on the prospective drug didn't look like it could compete with AstraZeneca's antipsychotic Seroquel.
Seroquel will soon be in generic form and AstraZeneca will need to fill that portfolio gap with something... like a new blockbuster. Seroquel has been touted as an antidepressant through clever marketing campaigns, and of course we all know that Seroquel got to market at all because of buried trial data to make the drug look good on paper.
28,000 or so lawsuits later we know how that went. Diabetes and weight gain seem to be the norm with Seroquel, though company spokespeople will tell you otherwise.
Savvy consumers might not want to deal with breaking in a new antidepressant co-created by a Big Tobacco company wanting to break in on that antipsychotic action. Instead, they might want to trySmoking quetiapine Seroquel, as in Mac Ball because quetiapine isn't as innocent as it appears.
Abstract
Quetiapine abuse has been a cause for increased concern among clinicians. Several reports have highlighted this in the past. Reports of quetiapine abuse have varied in their routes of administration. The authors have had experience in managing several patients who have admitted to the use of quetiapine outside of prescription settings. This article examines the case of a recent patient on the authors’ inpatient unit who admitted to a novel route of abuse. While quetiapine’s abuse potential in the black market is well known, motivations for the abuse of quetiapine have varied in the past. Anxiety and insomnia has been amongst the reported motivations. Combination abuse of quetiapine with cocaine, called “Q ball,” have been reported previously. Quetiapine serves as a substitute for heroin when used in this combination. This article highlights a previously unreported combination of quetiapine with marijuana used in the inhalational route in what is termed a “Maq ball.”
Sounds like Big Profit $$$$
AstraZeneca, Targacept drug fails depression test Reuters
The drug, called TC-5214, has been deemed a potential big seller as the first in a new class of medicines that work by modulating neuronal nicotinic receptors. The companies have theorized that overstimulation of these receptors, or proteins, is associated with depression.
Shares of Targacept, a small U.S. drugmaker that began as part of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, plunged 58 percent to $7.97 in heavy afternoon trading on the Nasdaq. Partner AstraZeneca fell 3.2 percent in London.
Data from three other Phase III trials of TC-5214 are expected by the first half of next year. Should the results prove favorable, the companies aim to seek approval for the drug in the United States in the second half of 2012 and in Europe in 2015, a spokeswoman at AstraZeneca said.
Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez, who had expected the drug to see $1 billion in sales by 2017, yanked the forecast due to the failed trial results.
"TC-5214 was the most promising pipeline candidate and possessed the strongest commercial synergies with the AstraZeneca portfolio," Fernandez said in a research note, noting it could still be approved if ongoing studies succeed.
TC-5214 is being assessed as an add-on therapy for patients who do not do well on standard antidepressants. It would compete with drugs like AstraZeneca's older Seroquel and could help the company once Seroquel faces cheaper generics.
AstraZeneca agreed in 2009 to pay as much as $1.24 billion for rights to TC-5214, including an upfront payment of $200 million. The drug has been one of the few potential bright spots in its pipeline."
Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD & Stan White (Father of Deceased Veteran, Andrew White) disclose the following:
EL CAJON, Calif., Nov. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- As a neurologist who has discovered and described medical diseases, I (FAB) read the May 24, 2008, Charleston (WV) Gazette article "Vets taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder drugs die in sleep," and opened and financed my own investigation into these unexplained deaths.
Andrew White, Eric Layne, Nicholas Endicott and Derek Johnson, all in their twenties, were four West Virginia veterans who died in their sleep in early 2008. There were no signs of suicide or of a multi-drug "overdose" leading to coma, as claimed by the Inspector General of the VA. All had been diagnosed "PTSD"—a psychological diagnosis, not a disease (physical abnormality) of the brain. All were on the same prescribed drug cocktail, Seroquel (antipsychotic), Paxil (antidepressant) and Klonopin (benzodiazepine) and all appeared "normal" when they went to sleep.
On February 7, 2008, Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker, had announced there had been "a series, a sequence of deaths" in the military suggesting this was "often a consequence of the use of multiple prescription and nonprescription medicines and alcohol."
However, the deaths of the 'Charleston Four' were probable sudden cardiac deaths (SCD), a sudden, pulseless condition leading to brain death in 4-5 minutes, a survival rate or 3-4%, and not allowing time for transfer to a hospital. Conversely, drug-overdose coma is protracted, allowing time for discovery, diagnosis, transport, treatment, and frequently--survival.
Antipsychotics and antidepressants alone or in combination, are known to cause SCD. Sicouri and Antzelevitch (2008) concluded: (1) "A number of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs can increase the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death," (2)"Antipsychotics can increase cardiac risk even at low doses whereas antidepressants do it generally at high doses or in the setting of drug combinations."
On April 13, 2009, Baughman wrote the Office of the Surgeon General (OTSGWebPublisher@amedd.army.mil): "On February 7, 2008 the Surgeon General said there had been 'a series, a sequence of deaths.' Has the study of these deaths been published?"
On April 17, 2009 the Office of the Surgeon General responded, "The assessment is still pending and has not been released yet." More than a year later and still no explanation, nor further acknowledgement that these deaths even took place.
In a press release, (PRNewswire, May 19, 2009) Baughman wrote: "I call upon the military for an immediate embargo of all antipsychotics and antidepressants until there has been a complete, wholly public, clarification of the extent and causes of this epidemic of probable sudden cardiac deaths."
Googling "dead in bed," "dead in barracks," by April 16, 2009, veteran's wife, Diane Vande Burgt, had Googled 74 probable sudden cardiac deaths. By May 2010: 128, and, by November 2, 2011: 247. Two-hundred-forty-seven!
In April 2010 I was in anonymous receipt of an Army National Guard Serious Incident Report for the 5 months 10/03/09 to 3/7/10. In it were 93 "incidents" including 4 "heart attacks," 6 "cardiac arrests" and 3 "found dead"; 13 of 93 (14%) probable SCDs.
Pfc. Ryan Alderman, was on a cocktail of psych drugs when found unresponsive, dying in his barracks at Ft. Carson, Colo. Sudden cardiac death was confirmed by an ECG done at the scene. Inexplicably, military officials de-classified his death and reversed the cause, calling it instead, a "suicide."
Again I challenge the military to produce the evidence.
In June 2011, a DoD Health Advisory Group backed a highly questionable policy of "polypharmacy" asserting: "…multiple psychotropic meds may be appropriate in select individuals." The fact of the matter is that psychotropic drug polypharmacy is never safe, scientific, or medically justifiable. What it is a means of (1) maximizing profit, and (2) making it difficult to impossible to blame adverse effects on any one drug.
From 2001 to the present, US Central Command has given deploying troops 180 day supplies of prescription psychotropic drugs—Seroquel included. In a May 2010report of its Pain Management Task Force, the Army endorsed Seroquel in 25- or 50-milligram doses as a 'sleep aid.'
Over the past decade, $717 million was spent for Risperdal and $846 million for Seroquel, for a mind-blowing total of $1.5 billion when neither Risperdal nor Seroquel have been proven safe or effective for PTSD or sleep disorders.
Ironically, yet not surprisingly, pay-to-play in Washington becomes more egregious every day. Heather Bresch, daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, (D-WV) was recently named CEO of WV drug-maker Mylan Inc., that recently contracted with the DoD for over 20 million doses of Seroquel.
Defense Department Health Advisory Group chair, Charles Fogelman, warned: "DoD currently lacks a unified pharmacy database that reflects medication use across pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment settings." In essence, through a premeditated lack of record keeping, mandated by law at any other pharmacy or medical office to track potential fatal reactions to mixing prescription drugs, the military is willfully preempting all investigations into the injuries and deaths due to psychiatric drugs.
I call on the DoD, VA, House and Senate Armed Services and House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees to tell concerned Americans and the families of fallen heroes what psychiatric drugs each of the deceased, both combat and non-combat, soldiers and veterans were on?
It is time for the military and government to come clean.
AstraZeneca Indicted In Serbia For Alleged Bribery
November 7, 2011
By Samuel Rubenfeld
AstraZeneca PLC said Monday in a securities filing that it was criminally indicted in Serbia for alleged bribery.
The indictment, which according to the filing was served in August, accuses local AstraZeneca employees of having “made allegedly improper payments to physicians” at the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia.
In the filing, the company said it has filed a number of procedural motions to dismiss the charges.
“We intend to vigorously defend the matter and have filed anumber of pending preliminary procedural objections that ask the Serbian criminal court to dismiss the indictment,” Tony Jewell, an AstraZeneca spokesman, said in an email. “This case is still in preliminary stages, so we are not in a position, at this time to comment further or to predict the outcome.”
The disclosure was made when AstraZeneca reported third-quarter earnings on Oct. 27; the Financial Times reported it (sub req) at the time. Monday’s filing, the 6-K required of foreign issuers, was a bundle of press releases made by the company during October.
Last year, the director of the Institute—as well as several others, including the head of AstraZeneca’s Belgrade office—were arrested in an alleged bribery scheme that involved favoring some pharmaceutical companies’ products when purchasing cancer-treatment medicine.
The pharmaceutical industry is already staring at an industry-wide probe in the U.S. into alleged foreign bribery. AstraZeneca was one of several companies that disclosed it was being investigated for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars companies and individuals from bribing foreign officials to get or keep business.
Johnson & Johnson settled in April, agreeing to pay $70 million to U.S. authorities. In its latest annual report, AstraZeneca said it’s cooperating with U.S. authorities on the probe, and it couldn’t predict the scope, duration or outcome of the investigation.
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How many times have we heard this line of literal bullshit from AstraZeneca's PR department “We intend to vigorously defend the matter and have filed anumber of pending preliminary procedural objections that ask the Serbian criminal court to dismiss the indictment,”
Which really means AstraZeneca plans to spend what ever it takes and pull out all the stops to yet again get away with serious crimes that undoubtedly adversely effect the health and well being of countless numbers of consumers. While walking away unscathed, without accepting responsibility or being held accountable for their many detestable crimes....as they say "Just part & the cost of their criminal business as usual profitable operation".
