The Wall Street Journal reports on a whistleblower lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, with allegations about how the company tried to push sales of the anti-anemia drug Procrit "by offering contracts that fattened doctors' profits and urging its salespeople to push higher-than-approved doses." More:
"Dean McClellan, who worked for 12 years at J&J's Ortho Biotech unit selling Procrit, saved 15,000 pages of company memos, contracts and other work-related documents in a storage unit and shed he built off his garage. He says he was forced to retire in 2004 because the company told him his sales increases weren't high enough. He believes the company wanted him out because of his age, which was 55 at the time. Angry, he agreed to join a whistleblower lawsuit by another former Procrit salesman, Mark Duxbury. A brief filed by J&J says Mr. Duxbury was fired in 1998 for racial and sexual harassment. Through his attorney, Jan Schlichtmann, Mr. Duxbury says he was a star salesman for Ortho whom the company turned on after he told the truth about their business practices at a court-ordered deposition."
An FDA advisory committee meets today to reconsider the risks and benefits of Amgen’s Aranesp and Johnson & Johnson’s Procrit for cancer patients on chemotherapy.
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog reports: "The deliberations and recommendations of the panel could exert a powerful effect on use of the anemia drugs, whose side effects in some patients have raised questions about how broadly and aggressively they should be prescribed. A bunch of briefing documents appeared online today, and they show that the drugs could face a tough go of it."
Posted by schwitz at May 10, 2007 07:38 AM | TrackBack