Their Lawyer Says Corporate Integrity is Their No. 1 Goal.

Medical News: Pfizer Settles Fraud Charges for $2.3 Billion

Pfizer will pay the government $2.3 billion to settle criminal and civil charges that it promoted off-label uses for the disgraced painkiller valdecoxib (Bextra) and three other drugs.

The Justice Department said it was the largest healthcare fraud settlement in history.

More than half the settlement — $1.3 billion — involves Pfizer’s efforts to promote valdecoxib, a COX-2 inhibitor withdrawn from the market in 2005 because of cardiovascular and other risks.

Pfizer’s sales staff had urged doctors to prescribe the drug for surgical pain and to prevent deep vein thrombosis, according to court records from a criminal trial of a Pfizer manager earlier this year.

The other $1 billion covered charges that Pfizer improperly promoted the antipsychotic drug ziprasidone (Geodon), the antibiotic linezolid (Zyvox), and pregabalin (Lyrica), approved for epilepsy, fibromyalgia, and neuropathic pain.

The settlement will be shared between the federal government, state Medicaid programs, and whistleblowers. The latter include a Pennsylvania psychiatrist and at least one former Pfizer employee whose allegations helped launch the investigation.

Their complaints, which had been sealed until the settlement was reached, provided details on Pfizer’s alleged transgressions.

For example, according to one complaint, Pfizer pushed linezolid for several types of infections not named on its FDA-approved labeling, and also claimed it was superior to vancomycin without FDA approval.

Similarly, Pfizer was said to have promoted ziprasidone — approved only for schizophrenia or acute manic or mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder — for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism, and a host of other conditions.

In addition to promoting the off-label uses, Pfizer was also accused of paying kickbacks to doctors who prescribed the drugs.

Sales of ziprasidone, pregabalin, and linezolid in 2008 totaled about $2.5 billion, according to the consulting firm SDI Health.

Death Penalty on Hold

US supreme court calls a halt to executions

Death penalty campaigners yesterday said they expected the informal moratorium to last at least until next summer when the supreme court is expected to issue its ruling.The moratorium follows a decision by the supreme court on Tuesday night to block the execution of a Mississippi inmate minutes before he was to be put to death. Earl Wesley Berry, who has been on death row for 19 years for the murder of a woman, had been served his last supper and was 15 minutes away from execution when the court intervened.

The order for a delay marked the third time in just over a month that the supreme court has overruled state courts and the US court of appeals to block an execution.

Death penalty campaigners yesterday called the successive rulings a powerful sign that the supreme court wanted to put executions on hold while it considers a challenge to the way executions are conducted in America brought on behalf of a prisoner in Kentucky.

Justice Served

Man Gets Time Served for Staging Crashes

A Belarus native who helped put together a scheme that involved staged car crashes and phony insurance claims was sentenced to 16 months he already served and ordered to pay $334,000 restitution Friday in U.S. District Court.

Maxim Levin, 29, was also ordered by Judge William M. Skretny to finish his last semester at the University at Buffalo as part of a five-year period of supervised release. Levin took a guilty plea in March, one of nearly two dozen people to plead in the case, and admitted that he ran the former First Buffalo Medical Clinic in Williamsville.