In today's New York Times, Stephanie Saul reports; "The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company."
Pfizer acquired Warner Lambert (W/L) in 2000. W/L had marketed Neurontin throughout the 1990's. In 2004, the patents for Neurontin expired and Pfizer ceased marketing the drug. That same year, Pfizer paid a $430 million settlement for claims related to inappropriate marketing of Neurontin in the 1990's by W/L. (Sales of Neurontin approached $3 billion/year up to 2004 when its patent expired. According to my calculations, 430 million is about 0.00014% of 3 billion.)
Pfizer has maintained that the company changed marketing policies in 2000 when W/L was acquired, but specific evidence presented in the trial suggests that in 2000, Pfizer marketing managers were working with scientific writers to present "negative" studies in such a way as to make them appear to be "positive". That is, making studies which might indicate the medication would not be useful for a particular disorder appear to indicate that it IS useful for the disorder. Other evidence indicates that Pfizer attempted to delay the release of negative studies, or attempted to bury negative findings in papers covering multiple studies in order to camouflage the results.
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