With the Northern hemisphere flu season just around the corner, health officials are wondering whether a new flu will pop up in an old form. Avian (bird) flu had been eliminated in most of 63 countries when it last hit a peak, in 2006, health officials told the BBC. But the number of cases has been rising again since 2008, appearing in poultry or wild birds that previously had been virus-free. Plus, it’s showing signs of having side-stepped vaccines with a new mutant strain.

Did you ever wonder why it is that some people get the flu even when they’ve had a flu shot, while others seem to stay well even if they’ve never had a flu shot in their lives? To answer that question, researchers at the University of Michigan infected healthy people with the flu, and then observed what happened. According to MSNBC, they discovered that, first, only half of the study subjects came down with the flu and, second, that whether they got sick or not, everyone’s body was affected by the flu.

The difference, researchers said, was in the different ways the study subjects’ immune systems responded to the virus. The scientists then studied the subjects’ gene expression to see how their immune systems reacted to it, and found that everyone’s immune systems had “significant and complex” responses, even if they didn’t get sick. The key now, the researchers said, is to find out how the immune systems of those subjects who didn’t get sick fought off the virus. The study was published in PLoS Genetics in August.

The United States has made a global agreement with the World Health Organization and vaccine makers to share virus samples in exchange for vaccines produced for them. The vaccines would be sold at a reduced price or donated to countries that can’t afford them. According to Reuters, the negotiations for the deal began four years ago after the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus emerged in southeast Asia.

“A year later, Indonesia stopped sharing flu virus samples with the WHO’s network, demanding its share of vaccines,” Reuters said. The deal allows drug companies to decide between donating “significant amounts of vaccines or antivirals” or transferring “technology for manufacturing pandemic vaccines,” Reuters quoted an anonymous diplomatic source as saying.

While Reuters listed GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis as major flu vaccine makers, it apparently forgot that Baxter Healthcare of Deerfield, Illinois was the flu vaccine maker that instigated Indonesia to stop sharing its sample viruses in the first place. As reported by The New York Times and other media in February 2007, Indonesia stopped sending flu virus samples to the WHO and other countries after it signed a contract to sell them to Baxter. Two months later, Bloomberg reported that Indonesia was trying to negotiate the same deal with GSK and Novartis. And in November 2007, Reuters reported that Indonesia said it would not share any more viruses until there was a “guarantee” from richer nations and drug companies that poor countries would get affordable vaccines.

Last year, the swine flu scare had Americans lining up for flu shots.  This year, many people are rejecting the vaccines, according to two studies.

A Consumer Reports survey found that just 37 percent of people in the U.S. plan to definitely get vaccinated.  Around 30 percent say they definitely won’t get a shot, and 31 percent are undecided.  A second survey by retailer CVS found that fewer than 60 percent of respondents believed that they were “likely” to get a flu shot this year.

USA Today reports:

“Among people who say they’ll skip the flu shot this year, 44 percent told Consumer Reports they’re concerned about side effects, 41 percent said they’re concerned about safety and 45 percent said fear about last year’s pandemic was overblown, the survey says.”

Health experts in the UK government have for the first time acknowledged that the swine flu vaccine may be linked to an increased risk of the deadly nerve condition Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). Previously, the government had always denied a link between the paralyzing condition and the H1N1 vaccine.

It is not known precisely what causes GBS. The condition attacks the lining of the nerves, rendering them incapable of transmitting signals to muscles effectively. It can cause partial paralysis, and is sometimes fatal.

According to the Daily Mail:

“A vaccine used to combat a different form of swine flu in the US in 1976 led to 25 deaths from the condition, compared with just one death from swine flu itself.”

On August 19, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller issued a call for whistleblowers to step forward and help the state and federal government crack down on health care and pharmaceutical industries that defraud the government of billions of dollars.

Announcing that the Indiana Medicaid program would recover $9.52 million from a record $2.3 billion federal lawsuit won against Pfizer, Zoeller said that fraud on Medicare and Medicaid each year is estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar problem.

He isn’t wrong: According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalists, the vast corruption that pharmaceutical companies are guilty of is fraught with fraud, cover-ups of fatal side effects, and huge kickbacks paid to doctors.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real truth is that it is much, much worse.

Sources:

Office of the Indiana Attorney General August 19, 2010

Bureau of Investigative Journalism  August 11, 2010

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Fraud. Kickbacks. Price-setting, bribery and illegal sales activities, including a felony count of assisting the Arab League in acquiring documents on Israeli business activities. Add in all the doctored and back-dated documents, federal and civil lawsuits, and billions of dollars in government sanctions, fines, and penalties – not to mention the deaths – and you’d think it was the script for a thriller global action movie.

But no, it’s just Big Pharma at its deceitful best, dancing all the way to the bank while continuing to defraud the world of billions of dollars, and endangering the lives of regular people like you and me.

When I set out to investigate some of the criminal activities that the 12 largest pharmaceutical companies had been convicted of lately, I had a general idea of the hornet’s nest I would be stepping into.

But the amount of gross misconduct, fraud and deceit I found was so insidious, so massive, and so overwhelming that I decided to narrow my original 12 picks down to just five for the purposes of this article.

Because of the uniqueness of one particular company’s offense – a felony guilty plea to conspiring with the Arab League – I added a sixth.

‘Get Out of Jail Free’

I’m sure that each and every one of the drug companies who have had to pay fines for their criminal activities would argue that they’ve hardly been given a “get out of jail free” pass. But when you look at what they took, compared to what they’ve had to pay back, I think you’ll agree their punishment amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist.

The six companies I’m highlighting, in descending order of their annual revenues, are:

1.    Johnson & Johnson

2.    Pfizer

3.    Roche

4.    GlaxoSmithKline

5.    Novartis

6.    Baxter International

Size-wise, Baxter is actually way down the list at No. 17. But I felt this company’s offenses were so egregious that I just couldn’t ignore them. You may remember that last year at the height of the so-called flu pandemic, Baxter “mistakenly” mixed the lethal, live, biological weapon/virus, H5N1, with seasonal flu, then sent it to labs around Europe.

The potential disaster could have meant worldwide devastation, had it not been for the fact that the Czech Republic tested the vaccine before distributing it – and found it was a deadly cocktail.

Would it surprise you, then, that Baxter is the company that, in 1993, pled guilty to the felony count of violating U.S. laws prohibiting cooperation with the Arab boycott against Israel?

At the time, the Veterans Administration was so angered by this offense that they cited it as one reason why they wanted to suspend Baxter from all VA contracts for three years. The kicker was that the catalyst to the suspension was the VA’s contention that Baxter had “knowingly misled and provided false information to VA purchasing agents, in an attempt to get them to purchase Baxter products.”

In the end, Baxter agreed to pay more than $6.5 million in civil and criminal penalties to settle the Arab “mistake.”

Mistakes, Mistakes, Mistakes

You’ll find that “mistakes” happen often with Baxter.

From dozens of recalls of products that caused deaths and injuries, to at least 11 different guilty pleas to fraud and illegal sales activity, to more than 200 lawsuits – many of them stemming from selling AIDS-tainted blood to hemophiliacs – to more than $1.3 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties, Baxter over the years has racked up a record that makes Bonnie and Clyde look like angels.

While I don’t have space to name all the Baxter products that allegedly have caused deaths and/or injuries, a more recent product is its blood thinner Heparin, the subject of a lawsuit filed by actor Dennis Quaid and his wife, who say their twins were injured by it.

Another Baxter product that caused deaths through the years was its tainted dialysis filters, which led to the company settling lawsuits of patients who died as a result of the tainted filters.

It’s no wonder why, in 1999, Baxter was named by AllBusiness.com as one of the “Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s!”

Baxter earned its No. 87 spot on AllBusiness’ Top 100 Corporate Criminals list thanks to its guilty plea to dealing with the Arab League. But that place pales in comparison to (Hoffman La) Roche, which was crowned Corporate Criminal No. 1 for its $500 million criminal fine for leading a worldwide conspiracy to raise and fix prices and allocate market shares for certain vitamins sold in the United States and elsewhere.

The conspiracy lasted nine years, federal officials said – but it was the kind of “mistake” that was oft-repeated by a slew of drug companies during that decade.

Bribery, Fraud, Illegal Activities – They Just Keep Repeating

In all, 19 drug companies made AllBusiness.com’s Top 100 Corporate Criminals List for the 1990s.

Their fines totaled nearly $850 million – and that was just the settlements, not the actual losses the government alleged, for crimes such as defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and even the FDA, as well as international price-setting, false claims, hiding serious problems with their drugs and, in one case (Ortho, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), obstruction of justice and eight counts of persuading employees to destroy documents in a federal investigation!

What is sad and shocking is that this was just the tip of the iceberg, AllBusiness.com said in its report.

“For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are numerous others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught,”

I have to admit this literally makes me sick. If this is true – and I don’t doubt it one iota – can you imagine what the tally might be for the latest decade, which has seen record fines like the one that Pfizer was hit with last year?

Too Big to Fail?

You may recall that I wrote about this – in the largest health care fraud settlement in history, Pfizer was ordered to pay $2.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that the company illegally promoted uses of four of its drugs, including the painkiller Bextra. The other drugs were the antipsychotic Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and the anti-epileptic Lyrica.

Only a few years earlier, Pfizer had paid $430 million for illegally promoting uses of its seizure drug, Neurontin.

Yet, these are just a few examples of all the “mistakes” Pfizer has made through the years, making it very clear why AllBusiness.com named this company No. 17 in the Top Corporate Criminals for the 1990s.

Technically speaking, companies found guilty of fraud like this are banned from dealing with Medicare and Medicaid again. But, as I’ve already reported, do you think that happened with Pfizer?

Nope.

Instead, in a slap-on-the-wrist move that resembled the too-big-to-fail bank bailouts, federal prosecutors allowed Pfizer to avoid being sentenced for massive fraud and deception by letting them form a sham company to take the fall.

So, in the end, Pfizer’s “imaginary friend” Pharmacia & Upjohn shouldered the conviction, even though it had never sold any drugs. As CNN found, “the subsidiary is nothing more than a shell company whose only function is to plead guilty.”

And Pfizer got off scot-free, except for that little $2.3 billion fine that amounted to just three months’ profits.

And Then There’s Merck

Merck is another branch of Big Pharma with a long list of deaths to its credit. It was five years before Merck made its $30 billion recall of Vioxx that I warned my readers that this pain killer might be a real killer for some people.

As people began to die from heart attacks, strokes, and blood clotting disorders, I didn’t like being right. But I hated that after it was over, and the drug had been pulled, that Merck appeared to pick up the pieces painlessly – pun intended – by getting a new drug fast-tracked and on the market, lickety-split.

That drug is Gardasil, a vaccine that so far has been linked to thousands of adverse events and at least 49 unexplained deaths. It’s a situation that the FDA and CDC have been denying repeatedly, keeping their heads buried in the sand even as the adverse reports mount.

Merck has had other problems through the years, with more than $5.5 billion in judgments and fines levied against it. But like Pfizer, apparently somebody thinks this company is also “too big to fail.”

Johnson & Johnson: Just Another Drug Gang Member

As I mentioned earlier, this company made the 1990s Corporate Criminal list for deliberately destroying documents related to a criminal investigation case on one its products.

You probably don’t need to be reminded of all the recalls Johnson & Johnson has had over the years with its pain products, specifically Motrin, Tylenol and Fentanyl (pain killer patches). The fact that Johnson & Johnson has paid out over $1 billion in the last few years in fines and judgments probably comes as no surprise either.

But did you know that just recently (in May) the company pleaded guilty to illegally promoting its epilepsy drug Topamax for psychiatric purposes, and in so doing, settled a civil lawsuit in the case for $75 million?

You probably didn’t realize, either, that in January the US Dept. of Justice accused Johnson & Johnson of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare Inc to buy and recommend Johnson & Johnson drugs.

This latest scheme is the subject of a federal lawsuit that has 18 states suing not just Omnicare, but 14 other major drug companies, alleging that they ran this scheme together.

The lawsuit’s been filed under the federal False Claims Act and, yes, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, and GlaxoSmithKline are all in there with Omnicare. Watch for news of this lawsuit in the upcoming months – but in the meantime, think about this: in the wake of all this hassle, Omnicare’s CEO Joel Gemunder has quit, but not without remuneration.

His parting pay is a record $130 million!

But again, this is just the tip of an iceberg.

GlaxoSmithKline: 1,500 Deaths Alleged

At more than $5 billion in fines and judgments, GlaxoSmithKline is treading the same muddy waters as Merck, especially since its HPV vaccine counterpart, Cervarix, has its own share of adverse reactions and alleged deaths being reported around the world.

GSK’s most recent “mistakes” stem from its diabetes drug, Avandia, which the FDA on September 23 decided to “regulate” – a little – but not withdraw, leaving Avandia as a “mistake” that is still ongoing.

What we do know so far is that GSK spent 11 years trying to cover up trial data that showed that Avandia was a risky drug for the heart.

In my research for this article, I also discovered that Avandia topped the list of drugs linked to fatal adverse events in 2009, according to an analysis of U.S. Food and Drug Administration records. With a staggering 1,354 deaths reported to the FDA in 2009 alone, it’s hard to believe that this drug is still even in discussion!

But, like the others I investigated, GSK also has made hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for fraud cases and pricing disputes, as well as judgments won by the federal government in Medicare and Medicaid fraud suits.

Roche: No. 1 in AllBusiness.com’s Corporate Criminal Book

Roche’s offenses have been ongoing over the years in its companies and affiliates around the world. Most recently, in March, Roche suspended a clinical trial for a rheumatoid arthritis and lupus drug after serious infections, some of them fatal, were reported with it.

Officials reported that the trial was stopped because “opportunistic” infections like those found in the trials are not normal in healthy individuals. Sadly, that information was too late for 15 Japanese patients, who died after taking one of Roche’s approved arthritis medicines, Actemra.

But that’s not the end of deaths related to Roche products: Another Roche drug, Posicor, was withdrawn in 1998 after reports of at least 140 deaths linked to harmful interactions of Posicor with other drugs.

It’s no wonder that Roche has had to pay out nearly $2 billion in judgments and fines over the years, with thousands of individuals suing them. But before I move on, let me remind you that Roche also manufactures the CDC’s and FDA’s favorite flu stand-by, Tamiflu.

And in case you’ve forgotten, Tamiflu was blamed for the deaths of 18 Japanese children in 2007, and the subject of a warning by the Japanese Ministry of Health not to give this drug to children ages 10 to 19.

With a record like this, you would think that Roche and the rest of the drug king pins known as Big Pharma would have just a little shame over what they’ve done over the years. But, since the offenses just keep coming, and since states like Indiana have to keep on begging for whistleblowers to step forward, it’s apparent that Pharma’s sense of shame is nonexistent.

It seems fitting then, to end with this New York Times headline from 1999, when Roche was the subject of the price-fixing scandal that earned its No. 1 Corporate Criminal spot on AllBusiness.com’s list:

“Roche Officers Say Scandal Is a Surprise.” Yes, they proclaimed innocence, even while the federal government was busy yanking their hands right out of the cookie jar.

Scam-Buster Efforts by States and the Feds Continue

Fortunately, states’ attorneys general like Zoeller are gaining ground in gathering support for routing out the criminal acts that Big Pharma continues to perpetuate.

More and more, organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the False Claims Act Legal Center, and Politicol News are starting to investigate and publicize the illegal – and criminal – actions that these companies have been getting away with for years.

Thanks to the federal False Claims Act, state and federal investigators have a gun that they can use to hunt down and prosecute these heinous crimes with. If you visit the False Claims Act Legal Center website, you’ll get a hint of just how much this type of corporate has been going on.

But again, it’s just a hint, just the tip of an iceberg. What it does prove is that Big Pharma can’t be trusted – and they have the criminal history to prove it.

What’s most shocking, though, is that even when they get caught with deaths on their hands, along with the money in the cookie jar of price-fixing, fraud and deceit, is that like Pfizer, their punishments appear to be just little slaps on the wrist.

Apparently, they are too big to nail; too big to fail. So, like Baxter, instead of shutting down, they cough up a pittance in comparison to what they took, and continue onward with their government contracts for vaccines and other drugs.

It’s encouraging that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in July announced the formation of the Healthcare Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team, which together with the Department of Justice, US Attorneys’ Offices and other federal agencies will target healthcare and drug fraud.

But, as Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said, it’s going to take more than that. So, whistleblowers, come out and help in this crusade. It’s time to hold Big Pharma’s career criminals accountable.

Chart Showing 6 Drug Companies’ “Mistakes”

The chart below shows the type of criminal activity, lawsuits and fines or judgments I was able to find for each of the drug companies featured in this article. Keep in mind that these are conservative numbers – many records are not available without a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Also, many are not readily available online unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, and what year.

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A British study widely publicized in various online and print media outlets claims that flu vaccines can reduce the risk of heart attacks by as much as 19 percent. Critics, however, say the study is flawed, and that the “data” in it do not mean what the researchers are telling media.

The study looked at the records of 79,000 patients age 40 or older in England and Wales from 2001 to 2007, and after certain “controls” were factored in, researchers determined that those who’d gotten flu shots had fewer heart attacks. They admitted, however, that “there’s still a debate about whether this is a true link or not,”

Critics agreed that there definitely was a debate, and told USA Today that there were noticeable flaws in the study.

“Dr. Kirk Garratt, associate director of the division of cardiac intervention at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said the study found there were 19 percent fewer heart attack patients vaccinated in the previous year, not that there was a 19 percent reduction in heart attacks among the vaccinated,” USA Today said. “If getting a flu shot could prevent 19 percent of heart attacks, it would have been noticed before now,” Garratt added.

The H1N1 flu was actually no more serious than most seasonal strains, according to a new study. H1N1 virus disproportionately affected children and young adults, but the symptoms and risk of complications were similar to those of seasonal influenza viruses.

For the study, researchers compared the H1N1 pandemic flu with the seasonal H1N1 flu, as well as the H3N2 seasonal flu. H1N1 pandemic flu was not linked to substantially more hospitalization or pneumonia compared with either H1N1 seasonal flu or H3N2 seasonal flu.

Reuters reports:

“This year, it is doubtful H1N1 pandemic flu will be noticed … most people are now immune to this strain, because it spread so far and wide”.

In nearly all issues, the era of deception and duplicity has reached new heights. Even in the last frontiers of truth, such as the internet, disinformation operations are in full swing.

Prevent Disease, in an attempt to demonstrate the outright lies by national governments and the media, took three examples from the last year alone — the H1N1 scandal, airport body scanners and the BP oil disaster.

You can read the complete article linked below. According to Prevent Disease:

“… [T]he H1N1 scandal reached its pinnacle in the fall of 2009 … From radio, internet, television, newspapers, magazines, outdoor posters, signage and promotions, you could not escape the flu hype campaigns so diligently pursued by all the malicious agendas at play who only wanted one thing — to promote a dangerous H1N1 vaccine.”

Body scanners have been approved all over the world and marketed as the next greatest airport scanning technology, but they have potentially devastating health effects. And when news first unfolded about the April 20, 2010 BP oil disaster, the immediate response was to cover-up, deny and respond with ignorance.

The Swedish Medical Products Agency has received reports from health care professionals regarding narcolepsy as suspected adverse drug reaction following Pandemrix flu vaccination.

The reports concern teenaged children who developed narcolepsy symptoms one to two months after vaccination against the H1N1 pandemic. Finland is also looking into the possible link following an increase in the sleeping disorder among children this spring.

According to The Local:

“In the European Union, around 30 million people were vaccinated using Pandemrix. Sweden bought 18 million doses, which was enough to provide two injections for each person in its 9.3 million population.”

The Pandemrix package insert shows that “somnolence”, although not narcolepsy per se, is a known potential side effect of the drug.

Public health experts are likely to tell the world this month that the swine flu pandemic is ending.  The World Health Organization’s emergency committee may convene next week to review data and recommend that the agency declare the flu pandemic to be over.

U.S. health authorities determined last month that special medical measures to fight swine flu are no longer required and said other countries are likely to make similar assessments in coming weeks.

Bloomberg reports:

“Pharmaceutical companies reaped at least $10 billion in sales of vaccines and antivirals because of the outbreak … WHO came under fire over its handling of the pandemic, and the BMJ, formerly known as British Medical Journal, published a report in June saying the agency was swayed by experts who received money from [drug companies] Roche and Glaxo.”

About a quarter of the H1N1 vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired. This means that 40 million doses, worth about $260 million all told, are being written off as trash.  Another 30 million more doses will expire later, for a total of 70 million.

The outdated vaccine will be incinerated. The amount is more than twice the usual amount of leftover vaccine, and likely sets a record.

Local Techwire reports:

“If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the U.S. public will have gone to waste.”