What losers are they! Damned scoundrels! Those who would deny the market of affordable drugs that would benefit a wide segment of the population are villains indeed.

The controversial practice, known as “pay for delay,” occurs as part of patent litigation settlements and typically buys a brand-name drug company more time to sell its blockbuster drug exclusively until its patent on the drug expires. Federal Trade Commission regulators have said the practice costs consumers an estimated $3.5 billion each year, and have pushed for a ban.

Big Pharma like Big Oil is dependent on having the rules of the game changed to favor them. For those who favor free-market fundamentalism, this should be anathema. Personally, I favor a democratic market and the practices of Pfizer also fails that test. Patents aren’t made to last forever and once they have expired corporations should respect that and not try to circumvent it.

Xanax isn’t the most dangerous prescription pill on the market, but the anti-anxiety drug is so addictively powerful that doctors are starting to treat the benzodiazepine medicine as if it were an epidemic in itself. That’s increasingly a problem for Pfizer (PFE), which makes the branded version of the drug, the 11th most-prescribed product in the U.S. The company has already signaled it may need to take an asset writedown on the declining fortunes of Xanax.

via How the FDA Is Sleeping Through the Xanax Epidemic | BNET.

Apparently Xanax abuse has become something of a crisis. The FDA needs to get in control of this.

On the morality note. If you knew that a drug you manufactured for pigs and poultry contained arsenic which can have cancerous effects in humans. Why would you wait for the FDA to say something before you stopped selling it?

While Chantix has helped some smokers kick the habit, its record has been plagued by tragedy ever since it was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in May 2006. By mid-2009, the agency had received reports of nearly 300 suicide attempts—about a third were successful—and close to 5,000 serious psychiatric events in all, including symptoms like psychosis, blackouts, and aggression. Hundreds more reports have streamed in since.

via Quitting Smoking Can Be Dangerous to Your Health | Mother Jones.

The major villains in this story are Pfizer and the FDA. Pfizer did not do proper testing on people who had mental illnesses and the FDA let the drug coast through the approval process.

Update – 11/2/2011

It looks like a new study has come out linking Chantix with suicide and depression.

Researchers looked at adverse drug events reported by doctors, patients, and other people to the Food and Drug Administration’s MedWatch database between 1998 and September 2010. It found 2,925 submissions suggesting a connection between varenicline and depression, suicide attempt, and suicide. That compared with 229 reports for bupropion, an antidepressant also used to help people stop smoking that’s sold under the brand name Zyban and as a generic; and 95 reports for nicotine-replacement products, which include patches, gum, or lozenges that you can buy over the counter, and prescription nasal sprays or inhalers.

US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has dismissed as “preposterous” reports that it hired investigators to uncover evidence of corruption against a former Nigerian attorney general.

via BBC News – WikiLeaks: Pfizer denies dirty tricks claims in Nigeria.

You got Royal Dutch Shell running a spy service and now this Pfizer nonsense. The attorney general was investigating Pfizer over a trial which took place during a meningitis epidemic which killed eleven children. Of course Pfizer denies all of this but I really don’t believe anything they say.

Pfizer has agreed to set up a $75 million fund and to create a new compliance committee to settle shareholders’ lawsuits accusing the board and top officials of failing to stop illegal marketing of its drugs, according to a settlement agreement filed in United States District

The company denied any wrongdoing as part of the preliminary settlement, which is subject to judicial review. A Pfizer spokesman said the fund and committee would advance the regulatory and ethics work it had already started in recent years amid a series of government investigations.

via Pfizer Plans $75 Million Fund for Shareholder Suits – NYTimes.com.

That’s the problem with settlements the corporation never has to admit their guilt. None the less at least what Pfizer has done wrong was brought to light and reported on.

Once again Pfizer is recognized for doing the wrong thing. The list keeps growing.

A federal jury has awarded $1.37 million in damages to a former Pfizer scientist who claimed she was sickened by a genetically engineered virus at a company laboratory and then fired for raising safety concerns.

What’s sad is I bet Pfizer looks at this as the cost of doing business.

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..

Pfizer is not happy in just making their drugs unaffordable for Americans. Nope. They have to take their filthy hands to the continent of Africa to bleed those people as well.

In 1996, the company needed a human trial for what it hoped would be a pharmaceutical "blockbuster", a broad spectrum antibiotic that could be taken in tablet form. The US-based company sent a team of its doctors into the Nigerian slum city of Kano in the midst of an appalling meningitis epidemic to perform what it calls a "humanitarian mission". However the accusers claim it was an unlicensed medical trial on critically-ill children.

I don’t know how Pfizer’s board of directors can look themselves in the mirror and not be ashamed of what they see.

Eleven of the children died and many more, it is alleged, later suffered serious side-effects ranging from organ failure to brain damage. But with meningitis, cholera and measles still raging and crowds still queueing at the fence of the camp, the Pfizer team packed up after two weeks and left.

At least some justice has come out of this in the form of a 75 million dollar settlement.