The movie "The Constant Gardener" deals with the criminal behaviors of a pharmaceutical company in Africa. The movie got me thinking: do pharmaceutical companies commit similar misdoings in reality? It also led me to think about Rutgers and the University's School of Pharmacy. I decided to find out what the connection was between the school and pharmaceutical companies and to find out the records of these companies. What I found left me a little stunned.
Online, I found out there is a Rutgers Pharmaceutical Fellowship Program. The program has fellows work for one of about a dozen pharmaceuticals in the state. Novartis, a company the Rutgers website describes as being a "partner with Rutgers for 15 years," hosts the largest number of fellows. I decided to look up Novartis online at the New York Times Web site.
Novartis and several of the other program's companies appear to have had a number of business and ethical misdoings in the past two years as reported in the Times. Here is just a sample:
The European Medicines Agency began conducting an inquiry into arthritic drugs that use COX-2 inhibitors in Oct. 2004 after it was demonstrated that Merck's drug Vioxx, which has COX-2 inhibitors, doubled patients' risks of heart attacks and strokes. Both Pfizer's - one of the program's companies - and Novartis's drugs that use COX-2 inhibitors are under investigation. Pfizer was heavily criticized by the Food and Drug Association in February for hiding data that their drug Celebrex caused heart problems in patients and claiming that there was no evidence the drug did cause such damage.
Bristol Meyers Squibb - another one of the program's companies - was sued in 2004 by New York City for inflating costs of drugs and defrauding taxpayers.
Johnson and Johnson, with whom Rutgers has a long relationship, has come under scrutiny for campaigning state officials to change laws to require the prescription of newer, more expensive drugs to treat schizophrenia. Twelve states have adopted such laws. Texas was the first, after 10 drug companies helped to pay for and write the new state guidelines on such drugs. Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer then paid for similar meetings across the country. Pennsylvania and the FBI are currently investigating whether or not laws were broken through potentially illegal contributions to state officials by Johnson and Johnson.
Some of the newer drugs for schizophrenia - including Novartis's Clozaril, and J & J's Risperdal - are under investigation for potentially dangerous side effects such as increasing the risk of pancreatic cancer and causing potentially fatal diabetes.
In April, the FDA ordered that dementia drugs made by Novartis, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and Bristol-Meyers Squibb have black-box warnings on their labels, the FDA's most severe warning, because studies revealed that older patients who took the drugs had significantly increased risk of death.
Novartis promised to freely give a drug called Glivec, used to help patients with leukemia and stomach cancer, to an estimated 600,000 people worldwide who could not afford it. However, thus far only 3,500 people have received the free drug and Novartis has actively encouraged the recipients of the drugs to campaign their countries to purchase huge quantities of the drug. Novartis even stopped giving the drugs in India after the government allowed a cheaper, generic version of Glivec to be produced and distributed.
The company was supposed to put together a registry of all potential recipients throughout the world but it has recently been revealed that the registry was never created, as reported by the New York Times.
In February 2005, Novartis agreed to pay $49 million in an investigation into illegal business practice: a criminal fine of $4.5 million for attempting to obstruct a federal audit and $45 million in a civil settlement. The company also agreed to be no longer be part of federal health care contracts.
Novartis was also sued that month for gender discrimination by 12 women sales representatives who worked for the company.
Novartis's asthma drug Foradil was under investigation this summer by the FDA for potentially increasing patients's risks of death.
The information I found has led me to question the relationship of this university with companies that have committed these misdoings. What exactly is the relationship between Rutgers and Novartis and why would this school continue to be partners with a company - and several other companies - that have committed business, ethical and downright criminal misdoings? Not only is it bad for the reputation of this school, it is also bad for the students placed into companies that seem to be more interested in making money than in helping people or obeying the law and in situations where they are taught to disregard safety. Continuing to work with these companies will only demonstrate that the quest for the oh holy dollar is more important than following the rules of society and this is not a lesson that Rutgers should be teaching its students or projecting as a school through association with unethical companies.
Kevin McQueeny is a political science graduate student. His column, Student for Life, appears alternate Thursdays.
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