As well as coughing up the settlement, GSK are admitting to illegal drug marketing activities and failure to disclose vital drug safety information to the FDA. The huge corporate fine will end the government’s claim against GSK that they bought favourable medical opinion for cash and favors. Opinions that went way beyond prescribing drugs but also pushed them for uses outside of their FDA specified usage and prescribed labeling.
All doctors are free to prescribe medication ‘consistent with their clinical experience’, but it is against the law to promote medications for purposes beyond what the FDA approves them for. This kind of drug promotion is called ‘off label’ marketing. It is off-label of Dr. Drew to claim that Wellbutrin is less likely to make the taker sexually dysfunctional than other brands of antidepressants. GSK are saying nothing yet about their cash link to Dr. Drew.
What GSK is saying is,”The complaint to which you refer concern’s events in 1999, 13 years ago. It does not reflect what would be allowed in GSK today. The government has мейд many allegations and legal conclusions concerning Wellbutrin that GSK disputes. GSK admits, however, that during the period from January 1999 to December 2003, there were some occasions on which certain GSK sales representatives, speakers, and consultants promoted its antidepressant Wellbutrin to physicians for uses, which were not FDA-approved in violation of federal law.”
None of this does any good for the public’s faith in either GSK or the medical profession. Time will tell if the case is a fatal blow to the trust patients need to have with their doctors.
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