And even as it entered into its 2004 CIA for Neurontin, it was off-label marketing the seizure drug Lyrica, called Son of Neurontin, and three other meds, and had to enter into a third CIA, last year's $2.3 billion Bextra settlement which was the largest health care fraud settlement in US history.
The same day the settlement news broke, Pfizer announced it bought the drug giant Wyeth despite its thicket of Fen-Phen heart valve suits and Prempro cancer suits.
And there was more "bring 'em on" chutzpah.
After Vioxx and Pfizer's Bextra were withdrawn from the market for cardiovascular risks, Pfizer sought FDA approval for its Celebrex, the last legal COX-2 inhibitor, also suspected of cardiovascular risks, for use in children as young as two.
And in June, days before Pfizer suspended development of the osteoarthritis drug tanezumab for worsening joints, it touted the drug as "well-tolerated."
As a company, Pfizer, based in New York City with research headquarters in Groton, CT, looks better from the outside than the inside. Its Pac-Man like acquisition of drug companies, Warner-Lambert, Pharmacia (Searle, Upjohn), SUGEN, Vicuron, Rinat and Wyeth (also creating the world's biggest animal drug company) has created a silo structure in which the company's 90,000 employees in 90 countries feel unconnected to a corporate heartbeat. Loyalty is rare as employees in absorbed companies bought for their products alone fear getting pfired and 14,000 scientists bemoan that the company's biggies like Lipitor, Celebrex, Neurontin, Zithromax, Zyrtec and now Wyeth's Prempro weren't created inhouse.
Despite flying doctors to Caribbean resorts to attend drug pitches (by other paid doctors) and bestowing four figure honorariums on them and Enron moments like a Bextra sales extravaganza with acrobats, dancers and gigantic "fist" logo, Pfizer's Midtown Manhattan offices consist of unimpressive cubes.
After becoming the world's biggest drug company in 2000, Henry A. McKinnell, former Pfizer CEO and a Bushmate (replaced by less conservative Jeffrey B. Kindler) vowed to make Pfizer the "the world's most valued company to patients, to customers, to business partners, to colleagues, and to communities where we work and live." But thanks to the parade of damaging safety and ethics scandals, Esprit de corps is lacking except in some sales units.
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