You see ads for them all the time. Supplements, creams and pills that will help you lose weight, clear up your skin, improve your sex life or maybe do all of these things at the same time. Whether they’re in late night cable TV infomercials or spam email, you might think this kind of medical scam is perpetrated by small time operators making a fast buck. But scams can also be done by multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies (but in much more sophisticated ways), sometimes with potentially deadly results.
California based Genentech and its marketing partner OSI Pharmaceuticals will pay $67 million to settle claims that they misled doctors into prescribing a drug to lung cancer patients that the defendants knew would not work. Due to this highly corporate hucksterism some of these patients may have precious time robbed from them, dying earlier than they would have if they had taken more effective drugs. These allegations are in the settled lawsuit filed by a former Genentech employee. Federal prosecutors joined the lawsuit, reports the Los Angeles Times.