Pharmaceutical Companies to Pay $67 Million To Resolve False Claims Act Allegations Re Tarceva

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pharmaceutical-companies-pay-67-million-resolve-false-claims-act-allegations-relating-tarceva

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, June 6, 2016

Pharmaceutical Companies to Pay $67 Million To Resolve False Claims Act Allegations Relating to Tarceva

Pharmaceutical companies Genentech Inc. and OSI Pharmaceuticals LLC will pay $67 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations that they made misleading statements about the effectiveness of the drug Tarceva to treat non-small cell lung cancer, the Department of Justice announced today. Genentech, located in South San Francisco, California, and OSI Pharmaceuticals, located in Farmingdale, New York, co-promote Tarceva, which is approved to treat certain patients with non-small cell lung cancer or pancreatic cancer. OSI Pharmaceuticals LLC is the successor to OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc., which was acquired by Astellas Holding US Inc. in 2010 and converted to a limited liability company in 2011.
(snip)

The settlement resolves allegations that, between January 2006 and December 2011, Genentech and OSI Pharmaceuticals made misleading representations to physicians and other health care providers about the effectiveness of Tarceva to treat certain patients with non-small cell lung cancer, when there was little evidence to show that Tarceva was effective to treat those patients unless they also had never smoked or had a mutation in their epidermal growth factor receptor, which is a protein involved in the growth and spread of cancer cells.

As a result of today’s $67 million settlement, the federal government will receive $62.6 million and state Medicaid programs will receive $4.4 million. The Medicaid program is funded jointly by the state and federal governments.
(snip)

The settlement resolves allegations filed in a lawsuit by former Genentech employee Brian Shields, in federal court in San Francisco. The lawsuit was filed under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act, which permit private individuals to sue on behalf of the government for false claims and to share in any recovery. Shields will receive approximately $10 million.
(snip)

[fasttense]

1. And the Obama administration is NOT prosecuting Shields?

Has he gone soft on whistle blowers? Maybe Snowden can come home.

[HuskyOffset]

2. This is whistleblowing that helps the US gov't

not whistleblowing AGAINST the US gov't, so different outcome, it seems to me.

[annabanana]

3. Well DAMN them for all the false hopes they raised.

How cruel is that?

[TheBlackAdder]

4. Yeah, and all of the people who invested in their stocks who were duped.

.


If Social Security ever becomes consumer stock-market based, in less than a decade, most will lose everything.

Here's the tip: If you hear it on the news, on a radio, on TV, or anywhere... the money boys are already positioned.


They are just looking for the marks to put their money into the system so they can extract it.


.

[HeartoftheMidwest]

5. The Big Pharma industry spends over 6 BILLION dollars a year...

...on marketing and advertising alone...probably even more than that, assuming there's some under-reporting going on.
Fines that are more proportional to the company's profits and worth, and jail sentences for those committing the offenses might go further to deter those types of crimes.

And make no mistake, people died, or had their lives shortened, because of this criminal behavior.