A mother-turned advocate’s journey that links a non-profit children’s advocacy group, with assets over $15 million [2009] with nationally-renowned mass tort and class action defense law firms, to the Connecticut DCF – an $865 million bureaucracy, as described by the Connecticut Mirror.
Study patients took the anti-seizure drug Neurontin, and researchers measured tons of possible outcomes (like pain with touch, pain with cold, excessive pain with pinpricks, more than a dozen different scales for psychiatric symptoms, and so on). By random chance, if you measure enough outcomes, at least some of them will appear better after drug treatment. When the time came to report the findings, however, the researchers systematically omitted the outcomes on which the drug had no effect—and presented only the data showing benefit. That’s like dealing dozens of hands of poker to yourself but showing only the hand with good cards.
Pfizer’s $2.3 billion health care fraud settlement with the government announced this month by the US Department of Justice adds some firsts to the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company. It covers Pfizer’s kickbacks to health care providers and false claims submitted to government health care programs, also known as our tax dollars, in violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Forty-three states will share in the “give backs.”