I love it when one of my recurrent memes -- smoldering for months -- finally catches fire, in the MSM -- this time, in Fortune, mid-day today (Wa Po and NYT last week; WSJ two weeks ago):
. . . .[T]thanks to the predominance of state-run health care world wide, many doctors in other countries are considered government employees. Thus, the DOJ has launched several investigations into the world's largest pharmaceutical companies for FCPA violations. If any of these companies are found guilty of bribery, it could be a good opportunity for the DOJ to take a fresh look at routine interactions between doctors and drug companies back here in the United States. . . .But there are nuances to the physician-pharma relationship that only big scandals tend to bring out. Take Merck's anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, pulled from the market in 2004 for increasing patients' risk of a heart attack. In 2005, U.S. Representative Henry Waxman published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, partially blaming the Vioxx scandal on the fact that doctors get so much of their information about new drugs from representatives employed by the company making them. . . .
Critics argue the DOJ and Obama administration are taking away companies' ability to do business abroad by cracking down this way, but in fact, by more closely monitoring American businesses' overseas behavior, we're becoming better members of the international community. . . .
Do stay tuned.
2 comments:
Thanks for the article. Nice to know our government is at least "looking" at what is going on.
Indeed.
You're welcome -- do stop back by.
Namaste
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