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When Crime Pays: J&Js Drug Risperdal
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times


New York Times, September 17, 2015
Posted: October 11th, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/opinion/nicholas-kristof-w...

Risperdal is a billion-dollar antipsychotic medicine with real benefits and a few unfortunate side effects. It can cause strokes among the elderly. And it can cause boys to grow large, pendulous breasts; one boy developed a 46DD bust. Yet Johnson & Johnson marketed Risperdal aggressively to the elderly and to boys while allegedly manipulating and hiding the data about breast development. J&J got caught, pleaded guilty to a crime and has paid more than $2 billion in penalties and settlements. But that pales next to some $30 billion in sales of Risperdal around the world. In 1994, J&J released Risperdal. The Food and Drug Administration said it ... was effective primarily for schizophrenia in adults. Thats a small market. So J&J reinvented Risperdal as a drug for a broad range of problems, targeting everyone from seniors with dementia to children with autism. The company also turned to corporate welfare: It paid doctors and others consulting fees and successfully lobbied for Texas to adopt Risperdal in place of generics. Even though Risperdal wasnt approved for the elderly, J&J formed a sales force called ElderCare. The F.D.A. protested and noted that there were an excess number of deaths among the elderly who took the drug. At the same time, J&J ... began peddling the drug to pediatricians, so that by 2000, more than one-fifth of Risperdal was going to children and adolescents. In 2003, the company had a back to school marketing campaign for Risperdal. By 2004 Risperdal was a $3-billion-a-year drug.

Note: For more, see this NY Times article and this one. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing big pharma corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


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