Dr. Trevor Marshall - My presentation at the 4th Asian Congress on Autoimmunity is now online there. This is the first time I have attempted to explain everything in only 10 minutes, yet you will see new elements - like the bug-to-disease mathematics and Borrelia/EBV.
By Bill Berkrot
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Taking on corporate giants can feel like tilting at windmills, but John Kopchinski's six-year legal battle against Pfizer Inc just made him a rich man.
The Gulf War veteran and former Pfizer sales representative will earn more than $51.5 million as a result of his whistleblower lawsuit against the world's biggest drugmaker and the record penalty the company must pay the U.S. government for its massive marketing transgressions.
The unassuming Texas resident celebrated his windfall by having a family portrait photograph taken Wednesday morning.
"We're going to be staying right here in San Antonio in the same house, and my wife tells me when we go to the movies we're still getting one tub of popcorn -- the large tub," Kopchinski said in a telephone interview.
Kopchinski, appalled by Pfizer's tactics in selling the pain drug Bextra, filed a "qui tam" lawsuit in 2003, sparking federal and state probes that led to Wednesday's agreement by the company to pay $2.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties and plead guilty to a felony charge for promoting Bextra and 12 other drugs for unapproved uses and doses.
"In the Army I was expected to protect people at all costs," Kopchinski said in a statement. "At Pfizer I was expected to increase profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives.
"I couldn't do that," added Kopchinski, 45, who was fired by Pfizer in March of 2003, two years before the company pulled Bextra from the market over concerns it raised the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
At the time of his dismissal after raising his concerns with the company, Kopchinski had a baby son and his wife was pregnant with twins. He went from earning about $125,000 a year to living off his retirement fund before landing a job with an insurance company for $40,000 a year.
"It was a lot of stress on the family. I pretty much depleted my entire 401(k)," he said.
"The last six years have been pretty hard, so going forward it's going to be pretty much easier," said Kopchinski, noting that college for his young children "is taken care of."
Erika Kelton, Kopchinski's lead attorney from the firm of Phillips & Cohen LLP, said large rewards are justified because of what whistleblowers must endure, often for many years, after complaints within the company go unheeded.
"Particularly in pharma, it's no secret that it's an industry that can blackball former employees," Kelton said, "so the reward is important both to encourage people to step forward and to recognize that their contributions are huge."
Kopchinski and five other whistleblowers will earn more than $102 million in payments from the U.S. government under the False Claims Act through which individuals can reap rewards for exposing corporate wrongdoing.
"The use of whistleblowers has really opened up the keys to the kingdom in terms of what's going on in these companies," said Dean Zerbe, senior counsel for the National Whistleblower Center and a partner at the law firm of Zerbe, Fingeret, Frank and Jadav in Washington.
"You'd never find out what's happening without this kind of reward structure," Zerbe said.
Kopchinski was hired by former Pfizer CEO Edward Pratt in 1992 after carrying out a correspondence with him while serving as a platoon leader in a military police company on the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait border during the Gulf War.
Under a later Pfizer regime, he was selling the epilepsy drug Neurontin when a previous whistleblower suit was filed against the company over similar illegal promotion tactics that led to stiff penalties and a form of corporate probation.
At the time he was told by managers that the Neurontin suit would be in the news and any physicians who asked questions should be told it was just complaints from a disgruntled former employee, Kopchinski said. Ironically, after filing the Bextra suit, "I was the disgruntled former employee," he said.
"What you see here is a company which essentially had a culture of corruption," said Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a U.S. nonprofit organization that helps connect whistleblowers with attorneys on False Claims Act cases. He called the $2.3 billion settlement "a jaw-dropping amount of money."
The size of the whistleblower rewards announced Wednesday are already having an impact.
"I'm seeing it first-hand myself. I've gotten phone calls this morning," said Zerbe, who was approached by an employee of a hospital who claimed that it was overbilling the government, including charging for products it had received for free.
Despite the potential for huge rewards, however, life can be hellish for whistleblowers.
"If this was so easy everyone would be a millionaire," Burns said.
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WASHINGTON — Pfizer agreed Wednesday to pay out a record 2.3 billion dollars to settle a high-profile fraud case, pleading guilty to a criminal charge for marketing its painkiller Bextra illegally.
The settlement by the world's biggest drugmaker was trumpeted as a major victory by President Barack Obama's administration in its efforts to cut down fraud as part of a major overhaul of America's health care system.
Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a press conference to announce the settlement, which will end criminal and civil proceedings against Pfizer over the allegations it illegally marketed drugs for off-label purposes.
"This historic settlement will return nearly one billion dollars to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance programs, securing their future for the Americans who depend on these programs," she said in a statement.
The agreement with Pfizer is divided into several parts, the largest of which is a 1.195 billion dollar fine -- the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any matter, according to the Justice Department.
The company will also forfeit 105 million dollars and pay an additional one billion dollars "to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act that the company illegally promoted four drugs."
The case arose from allegations that Pfizer illegally marketed Bextra, the anti-psychotic drug Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and Lyrica, an anti-epileptic drug, for uses that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The Justice Department had alleged that Pfizer's inappropriate marketing "caused false claims to be submitted to government health care programs for uses that were not medically accepted indications and therefore not covered by those programs."
The settlement also ends civil proceedings over "allegations that Pfizer paid kickbacks to healthcare providers to induce them to prescribe these, as well as other, drugs," the Justice Department said.
Assistant Attorney General Tom Perrelli said the investigation into Pfizer's activities illustrated that combating healthcare fraud "is one of this administration's top law enforcement priorities."
"This case is a great example of the department's commitment to fiscal accountability, combating fraud, and returning much-needed dollars back to the US Treasury and state treasures," he said.
Amy Schulman, senior vice president and general counsel for Pfizer, said the drug company welcomed the settlement, which it had agreed to pay in principle back in January.
"These agreements bring final closure to significant legal matters and help to enhance our focus on what we do best -- discovering, developing and delivering innovative medicines," Schulman said, adding that the company did "regret certain actions taken in the past."
Pfizer shares were down 1.16 percent in midday trading.
The agreement was announced amid continuing efforts by the Obama administration to advance a healthcare reform package that faces stiff opposition.
The administration has countered that a key provision of the reform package is an effort to reduce waste and fraud.
"Illegal conduct and fraud by pharmaceutical companies puts the public health at risk, corrupts medical decisions by health care providers, and costs the government billions of dollars," said Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division.
"This civil settlement and plea agreement by Pfizer represent yet another example of what penalties will be faced when a pharmaceutical company puts profits ahead of patient welfare."
