Exclusive: Glaxo whistleblower goes public with
shocking details of bribery, marketing fraud and other pharma crimes
(NaturalNews) GlaxoSmithKline employee and whistleblower Blair Hamrick has
helped make medical history. Together with his colleague Gregory Thorpe, Blair
blew the whistle on criminal practices taking place inside GlaxoSmithKline which
have now led to the largest criminal admission and financial settlement in the
history of western medicine. GSK is paying a $3 billion fine while
pleading guilty to felony crimes. (http://www.naturalnews.com/036416_GlaxoSmithKline_fraud_criminal_char...).
Blair recently joined Mike Adams on the Health Ranger Report for a video
interview. In this astonishing interview, Blair describes his firsthand
knowledge of the "bribery" of physicians, the push for off-label marketing of
drugs for unapproved health conditions, the illegal marketing of drugs to
children, how 80 percent of physicians were willing to be "on the take," and
other astonishing details from behind the scenes of the criminally-operated
medical mafia known as Big Pharma.
The full video interview is available on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_RJ9QPG70U
And on TV.NaturalNews.com at:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=1FE6404520AA77A877753AA936722510
Blair Hamrick is also being interviewed on live national radio by Mike Adams on
the Alex Jones Show, Tuesday, July 17th, beginning at 12 noon Eastern / 9 am
Pacific (www.InfoWars.com).
Those who miss the live broadcast can download the audio file from the Alex
Jones Show archives at
www.PrisonPlanet.TV
Below, we've published selected transcribed statements from Blair Hamrick as
revealed in the above videos.
The worst decision ever made by any drug company
The $3 billion settlement was achieved with the help of the law firm known as
Kenney & McCafferty (http://quitam-lawyer.com),
specializing in whistleblower cases.
"When our clients were forced out of their marketing positions, GlaxoSmithKline
('GSK') had proof of illegal off-label prescription drug marketing. Our clients
properly reported those marketing misdeeds to management in 2001. An ensuing GSK
internal investigation verified their allegations, but the company took no
action, choosing hefty profits over compliance and patient safety," said
whistleblower attorney Tavy Deming of Kenney & McCafferty. (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/glaxosmithklines-gsk-3-billio...)
"GSK could have saved hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion or more dollars of
the $3 billion it paid today by following through on the combined Human
Resources / Corporate Compliance investigation they launched. Instead they
ignored evidence of improper marketing and physician kickbacks. When you look at
the detail and accuracy of Greg Thorpe's written complaints distributed to the
highest levels of Glaxo it's almost surreal that the company took no corrective
action. Now more than a decade later, GSK is essentially admitting that Thorpe
had been right in 2001," Kenney said. "It's been a very, very, very long 10
years for whistleblowers Thorpe and Blair Hamrick."
Court documents reveal even more details
The following PDF document contains selected pages from the "seventh amended
complaint" filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, where Gregory
Thorpe and Blair Hamrick sued Smith Kline Beecham and GlaxoSmithKline.
This document shows some of the GENERAL ALLEGATIONS against
GlaxoSmithKline. View the full document here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/GSK_7th_amended_complaint_Select_Pag...
These allegations are vast and disturbing. They include:
From 1997 to the present and continuing, GSK's marketing plan, devised at a
senior executive level, has been to "Exploit the Bolus" of government-funded
healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Tricare, with the direct and intended
effect of causing the submission of false claims to such programs as identified
herein.
GSK has illegally and fraudulently promoted and marketed the sale of its drugs
for off label, non-medically accepted uses... As part of this scheme, GSK
overtly and aggressively targeted physicians identified by GSK's prescription
tracking methods to have the largest volumes of patients enrolled in
government-funded healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Tricare.
GSK has paid illegal remuneration (i.e. kickbacks) to physicians and other
health care providers with the purpose and intent of inducing those physicians
and healthcare providers to prescribe GSK drugs in return in violation of the
federal Anti-Kickback law and the analogous anti-kickback laws of the Plaintiff
States.
Top level GSK managers and executives, including but not limited to GSK's Chief
Executive Officer J.P. Garnier, current President of Pharmaceutical Operations
David Stout, Vice Chairman of Pharmaceuticals (and former President of
Pharmaceutical Operations) Robert A. Ingram, Senior Vice President Stan Hull,
Regional Director Mike Bennett, and Vice President and Head of Corporate
Compliance Arjun Rajaratnam, have been aware of GSK's illegal marketing schemes
and have played an active role in supporting and promoting these schemes.
Astonishing quotes from whistleblower Blair Hamrick
The following are all quotes from Blair Hamrick, as found in this Health Ranger
Report interview with Mike Adams. Watch the full video at:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=1FE6404520AA77A877753AA936722510
How it all began:
It started out, we were discussing where the company was going and how the
company had taken a turn asking us to do unethical and illegal things. Selling
drugs off label. Selling drugs to children that the drug says specifically in
its package insert this drug is not indicated for children under 18, but they
were asking us specifically to sell it to children.
Being trained to sell drugs off label:
When we would have regional meetings, we would train on how to sell off
label. How to find niche products for instance, like Wellbutrin, it was
indicated for depression, but then apparently they were not satisfied with the
amount of money they were making, so they started pushing it for weight loss,
for pediatrics, for sexual dysfunction. You've probably heard the quote, this
catch phrase went around to doctors you could only see for a brief second. Hey
doc, remember Wellbutrin is the happy horny skinny drug. These are catch
phrases that drills the name of the drug in the back of the doctor's mind, and
they get duped into writing prescriptions for a product that may not be
appropriate.
That was for when you only had a minute to talk to the doctor. Remember
Wellbutrin it's the happy horny skinny drug. Now, if you actually got the
opportunity to speak to the physician for a sit-down appointment, you may then
start talking about things like intimacy and depression, and how with the
competitor drugs like Paxil, patients have problems with their libido, and you
should use Wellbutrin because it increases the libido, so depending on what your
primary drug was to promote, we were trained on uncovering what doctor's
objections were and then to come back, and spin it so that the doctor would
start writing your drug.
About off-label marketing:
When a company actively markets a drug that is not indicated for a specific
disease state, that is a violation of the law. ...And it's commonplace.
About spinning side effects:
With those studies, you're trained to focus on how well it works, but don't
focus on the side effects so much. You don't really want to bring that one up.
If they ask the questions, then you can address it, but let's spin it in a very
positive manner.
[We would say] well, doctor, the insomnia [side effect] is transient. So it's
only a problem for the first couple of days. Once your patients acclimate to the
drug, the insomnia will fade away. So it's a spin machine.
For instance the drug Advair for asthma. They came out with the S.M.A.R.T. data,
showed an increase incidence of death in African American people. So the study
was stopped, they had black box warnings in the package insert, we were trained
to tell the doctors well, doctor, you know most people of lower socioeconomic
conditions are not compliant with their medications, so with Advair you don't
have to worry about your patients not taking their inhaled corticosteroid
because Advair is a combination of an inhaled corticosteroid and a long-acting
beta-agonist. So it's always a spin, so they were basically, according to our
complaint, taking a very negative dangerous outcome of a drug [study] and trying
to spin it as positive.
About corporate responsibility for products that harm consumers:
When you look at a drug like Wellbutrin, and it has a 0.1% incidence of
seizure, that's one in a thousand, but if you're that one person that has a
seizure, it's 100 percent [for you]. Where [we] drew the line is realizing that
if a child has a seizure, who's responsible? Is it the doctor? Is it me? Is it
the company? Where does the buck stop? And unfortunately in the corporate world,
there are so many veils of protection that... they're a corporate defendant
which is nothing more than a table full of attorneys, and nobody pays the price.
It's offensive. In my opinion, they have no regard whatsoever for precious human
life. ...But I have suffered nothing compared to a parent whose child has
committed suicide on Paxil. Imagine how horrifying that is. It's so repulsive.
You're just talking about a bad company run by bad people, in my opinion.
About holding drug company CEOs criminally responsible for their acts:
When will the public be outraged and say enough is enough? Because this kind
of behavior will continue until somebody goes to prison. They're hurting our
children. It's offensive, it's immoral, it's unethical, and for a company to
have the slogan of letting people do more, and live longer and do better, and
then hide behind that slogan [while] you're telling your sales reps to sell
off-label to children... how evil does it get? It just doesn't get any more evil
than that.
Illegal kickbacks and the bribery of doctors
I was promoted when I was with Glaxo, after about two years with Glaxo, to a
specialty position, I was called a therapeutic area specialist. So one of my
jobs was to recruit local speakers, to become trained on the drugs to go and
speak to other physicians. You're taking them down the primrose path of payoffs.
First, they have to start writing the drug, and if they're not writing the drug
enough, you have to get on them about that, then when they do a speaking program
at $2,000 for 30 minutes -- anywhere from $500 to $2500 for a half-hour talk --
then if the message they are sending is not exactly the way you want it to go,
then you coach the doctor about here's our marketing message, this is the point
we want to get out to other physicians... so yes, I saw it firsthand.
I even had doctors who, when I walked into their office and they found out I was
the therapeutic area specialist, they were like hey, can you set me up with the
speaking program? Because it's extra money. There are even doctors out there,
they make so much money on the speaking tours, they start hiring nurse
practitioners or other doctors to see their patients, and they may only go into
the office two or three times a month. Because they're out speaking. It's so
lucrative. ...[they can make] $6,000 in one day to do three half-hour
presentations. ...And most of the slide shows come from the company marketing
departments.
At the time I left Glaxo, they had over 40,000 speakers on their speakers'
bureau.
According to court documents, GlaxoSmithKline had actually developed a network
of "speakers" (i.e. primarily doctors receiving kickbacks for writing
prescriptions) totaling 49,000.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.naturalnews.com/036385_GlaxoSmithKline_criminal_fraud_brib...
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/glaxosmithkline-settlement-unzi...
http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/glaxosmithkline-whistleblower-talks...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_RJ9QPG70U