Vicki Batts – It often seems like the corruption of Big Pharma knows no bounds — and just when you think they can’t get any worse, they go and prove you wrong. It recently came to light that in addition to bribing doctors and misleading insurance companies, a pharmaceutical company even went so far as to create a network of phony cancer patients for their drugs. It’s almost like a trifecta of corruption, isn’t it?
The company in question, Insys Therapeutics, is reportedly being sued for their wide-ranging misconduct. A federal indictment was presented by Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, and a congressional investigation is still on-going. A new report made available by McCaskill’s office details just how far Insys went to push their sublingual, sprayable form of fentanyl, a drug called Subsys. As you may have heard, fentanyl is one of strongest and most deadly opioid drugs on the market. As Waking Times explains, Subsys has only been approved for patients suffering with what the FDA calls “breakthrough cancer pain.” To put it simply, Subsys is only approved for cancer patients. (Conventional cancer treatment is a whole other story, of course.) Continue reading
Daniel Barker