Nineteen pharmaceutical companies. Twenty-one bribery investigations. Over $1.1 billion in sanctions. Zero admissions of wrongdoing.

A new peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics spent years combing through OECD bribery reports across five countries and two decades. The names on the list are not fringe operators. Novartis, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Teva, Novo Nordisk. Bribes were paid through shell companies, fake consulting contracts, sham clinical studies, charitable foundations, and spa weekends billed as medical education. The analysis found that in case after case, bribery was approved or knowingly tolerated by senior management.

A separate 25-year analysis of US pharmaceutical kickback fines found that companies paid penalties amounting to 2.2% of the revenue tied to the violations. The penalties are not a deterrent. They are overhead.

The article puts all of this in the broader context of an industry that also brought us the opioid crisis, suppressed safety data on antidepressants in children, and pushed through a COVID vaccine rollout that bypassed standard long-term safety requirements while governments indemnified the manufacturers.

https://thehighwire.com/editorial/nineteen-companies-twenty-one-investigations-zero-admissions-of-wrongdoing/

@delbigtree