Can We Trust The Science When Drug Companies Get Sued So Much?

Because of COVID 19 we have heard the expression over and over again to trust the science. It’s a great slogan and it’s been enforced against doctors who raised questions about treatments by losing their license to practice medicine.

A group called Public Citizen looked behind the scenes to discover all the lawsuits that have occurred again big pharma and settlement numbers are hugh!

Over the last 3 decades, the drug companies have been found guilty or settled cases forcing them to pay $62 billion in penalties for illegal practices. You read that right…$62 with a B.

According to Public Citizen this number only reflects a portion of the wrongdoings. 

Of the 545 violations and cases where charges were alleged the figures broke down this way:

39% were for price fixing and 36% were for unlawful promotions.

So which companies paid out the most in these settlements? How about:
Purdue ($8.9 billion)
Johnson & Johnson ($8.4 billion)
GlaxoSmithKline ($7.9 billion)
and Pfizer ($4.7 billion).

What this report doesn’t consider is the harm to individuals who rely on these drugs as something that’s going to help them. BTW, I’m not even going into the side effects in this blog which can harm or kill you! Just watch the tv commercials where they play happy music and scenes you’ve been watching are serene and heart touching while they list the side-effects.

So, this is an enormous amount of money that the drug companies are paying out. The question is why do they continue to do it?

The answer is simple. The industry wound up with profits being reported by Public Citizen during the 19-year period ending in 2018 of (can I get a drum roll!) $1.9 trillion dollars. That’s right – it’s TRILLIONS of dollars!

All these penalties are viewed simply as the cost of doing business. Anyone wanting to trade billions of dollars to make 1.9 trillion dollars? In addition, these penalties are only on the drugs that the companies were caught doing wrongs.

So, I think there’s a simple answer to all of this. The State and Federal attorneys generals need to be arresting and prosecuting the top executives in these companies. All you need is several of the Presidents and Vice Presidents to go to jail to wake the industry up that the TRILLIONS has some real consequences to them!
(Reported Public Citizen News, July/August 2024)