During a December panel discussion at the Washington, D.C.-based Food and Drug Law Institute, a nonprofit organization providing an ongoing forum for discussing legal issues involving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the drug industry, the growing epidemic of criminal and civil legal violations by the pharmaceutical industry was a hot topic.
Eric Blumberg, deputy chief counsel for litigation at the FDA, pulled no punches. Commenting on the growing, billions-per-year monetary fraud settlements by the drug industry, he stated: “Money is clearly not doing the job; qui tam (whistleblower) complaints are still falling across my desk like snowflakes! We need to employ a ‘bigger hammer,’ to send people to jail.
The seemingly never-ending, record-breaking succession of billion-dollar fines against this industry argues instead, in my view, that industry does see these penalties as merely “the cost of doing business.” This is yet another reason for the quite out-of-control prices of prescription drugs.
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