Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare

Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare
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Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare
Fraudulent marketing and counterfeit prescription of drugs is one of the most serious corporate crimes in the society today. Unlike other corporate crimes like bribery, environmental pollution, dumping of substandard products in the market and exploitation of workers, counterfeit prescription has far more reaching effects than the mere violation of ethical laws. Counterfeit prescription of drugs is not only unethical because it involves the marketing of products under false labels (false claims of treating certain diseases and conditions), but also exposes unknowing users to other harmful side effects. But more worrying is the public deception upon which counterfeit prescriptions are marketed to consumers. A case in point is the scandal involving the Swiss drug manufacturer Novartis, which in 2010 was fined $423 million for the illegal promotion and selling of five drugs that the company falsely claimed could treat psychiatric conditions. With reference to the illegal marketing practices of Novartis, this essay discusses the dangers of counterfeit prescriptions as one of the most serious corporate crimes in society today.
In 2010, Novartis, a Swiss multinational manufacturer of medical drugs, admitted to charges of having illegally marketed Trileptal for the treatment of psychiatric conditions and pain relieve from acute pain (Gotzsche, 2012). Although the drug is approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of epilepsy and partial seizures, it has not been tested for the treatment of psychiatric uses or for pain management. However, the company's promotion presented the drug as ideal for psychiatric use, in violation of the FDA regulations. FDA prohibits drug manufacturers and marketers against promoting and selling of products under uses other than those for which the product was approved. In addition, the company was accused of paying medical professionals huge kickbacks to prescribe five other drugs, including Diovan (for hypertension treatment) and Zelnorm (for constipation and painful bowel movement), although these drugs had been banned from the market by the US FDA in 2007 after they were attributed to cardiovascular toxicity (Gotzche, 2012).
The problem of counterfeit prescription is a serious one because of the size of the pharmaceutical industry. Most drug manufacturers are multinational corporations, which allows them to market and sell their products to a large consumer base. The globalization of the pharmaceutical industry is particularly more problematic in poor countries where multinationals can easily dump substandard and counterfeit drugs (Newton, Green, & Fernández, 2010). When a multinational company like Novartis deceives the public about the medical uses of a drug, it has the potential of affecting a lot of people. The scope of this problem is better illustrated by the ...