Commercial Alert has a good piece on Pfizer’s illegal marketing of a drug called Bextra. Bextra is a painkiller that was taken off the market in 2005 due to safety concerns. The article which cites a CNN special investigation shows the power that a corporations like Pfizer yields even when caught.

Promoting drugs for unapproved uses can put patients at risk by circumventing the FDA’s judgment over which products are safe and effective. For that reason, “off-label” promotion is against the law.

Shame, Shame, Shame! Pfizer. You pharmaceutical corporations are all the same whether it be Zyprexa or Vioxx you cannot be trusted. The executives and directors of these corporations are like little children.

But in November 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Bextra was not safe for patients at high risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The FDA approved Bextra only for arthritis and menstrual cramps. It rejected the drug in higher doses for acute, surgical pain..

This approval was from the Bush administration FDA! An agency that did more harm than good during those years of a failed decade. In the end Pfizer escaped further discipline because of who they are. They’re too big to nail.

But when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail.

Why? Because any company convicted of a major health care fraud is automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid. Convicting Pfizer on Bextra would prevent the company from billing federal health programs for any of its products. It would be a corporate death sentence..