This article is part of the following series: Risperdal on trial
The courtroom is a modern and fairly small space, with room for perhaps 100-120 people in the gallery. At the start of proceedings on January 10, the gallery was quite full. By the next day fewer than half the seats were occupied. Most of those remaining appear to be connected to the legal teams of the two sides. This is …
This article is part of the following series: Risperdal on trial
When I first began interviewing pharmaceutical company executives on site, I was baffled by the size of their “government affairs” or similarly named departments. I understood that regulatory matters were complex and important to the process of drug licensing, but did management of that task require entire departments of full-time employees? The reason for this remained unclear to me until …
This article is part of the following series: Risperdal on trial
(A disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own, and I do not speak for my department or university.)
In my first post on the Risperdal suit that commenced in Austin this week, I said that the outcome of the case potentially concerns much more than the $579 million plus penalties that Johnson & Johnson might have to return to …
This article is part of the following series: Risperdal on trial
I. Marketing = Education
The first evidence brought before the jury on the afternoon of January 10 was the deposition of a former Janssen product manager, Thomas Anderson, who was one of two marketing managers responsible for launching Risperdal in 1993. The exhibit placed before the jury was a document from the early planning days, entitled “Building a Consensus.” The …
This article is part of the following series: Risperdal on trial
In the past two years, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals were successfully sued for $257.7 million in Louisiana and $327 million in South Carolina. More recently, J&J has been levied a $1 billion charge in connection with Federal probes into the marketing of Risperdal.
On January 10th 2012, the State of Texas launched its case against J&J, …
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has relentlessly pursued fraud, protectionism, price gouging, and other ethical violations in pharmaceutical and medical device marketing practices. Grassley is the only Republican member of Congress who supports intensified regulation in the health industries. Yet he was an outspoken critic of Obamacare, despite the president’s hopes to recruit him to the cause, and drug companies are …
Science, Medicine, and Anthropology