Last week the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, spoke in Washington DC and declared that people who spread any “minisinformation” about COVID-19 vaccines are criminals.
“Those people are criminals,” he said. “They’re not bad people. They’re criminals…”
Now to be clear, there is without doubt an issue with vaccine misinformation, with some pretty outrageous things being said. This even preceded COVD-19, and should of course be addressed. But is Mr Bourla the right person to be calling out these “criminals”? Aside from a very obvious conflict of interest when he speaks, from an individual who earned over $20 million as the head of Pfizer in 2020, if we are talking about criminal activity—any big pharmaceutical company is on very thin ice indeed.
A quick online search on Wikipedia will reveal that some of the biggest payouts in US history for fraudulent activity have come from—you guessed it—Big Pharma!
Exhibit A. You can view the biggest settlements here (I encourage you to see the full list). Let me list the top 5:
1.GlaxoSmithKline in 2012. Paid $3 billion for criminal off-label promotion and failure to disclose safety data. Further civil penalties for kickbacks to physicians and making false and misleading statements on drug safety.
2.Pfizer in 2009. Paid $2.3 billion for off-label promotions and illegal kickbacks, including a record $1.3 billion criminal fine.
3.Johnson and Johnson in 2013. Paid $2.2 billion for off-label promotions and illegal kickbacks.
4.Abbott Laboratories in 2012. Paid $1.5 billion for off-label promotions.
5.Eli Lilly in 2009. Paid $1.4 billion for off-label promotions.
These are absolutely STAGGERING dollar amounts. A reminder: all of these were within the last decade.
So needless to say, if we are talking about illegal activities and pointing the finger at “criminals”, if we use criminal settlements as a benchmark—Big Pharma are the worst offenders in history! Perhaps they, and highly paid CEOs, should take a long hard look in the mirror and keep their mouths shut on this issue.
Suneel Dhand is a physician, writer, and YouTuber. He is Founder at MedStoic Lifestyle Medicine and DocsDox . Follow him on YouTube and Facebook.