As faculty members, Borison and Diamond were supposed to get approval for research and payments for trials were supposed to go the school. But according to Georgia authorities, who indicted the duo in early 1997, in 1989 they started having the drug makers send payments directly to them.
They simply opened an office across from the school, hired a commercial service to do ethical reviews of their studies, and placed their staff on the school's payroll but kept all the money for themselves.
As unbelievable as it may seem, the scheme worked for about 7 years. From 1989 to 1996, Borison and Diamond made over $10 million including more than $4 million from schizophrenia drugs, according to the indictment and testimony during an investigation by the Augusta Veterans Affairs Hospital, where Borison was chief of psychiatry.
And these guys were slick. To recruit the mostly male patients, they hired good-looking young women, who testified that they were paid bonuses that ran into the thousands, and one staffer was even given a Honda Accord.
To find their recruits, workers looked for mentally ill patients who were stable and living in the community and offered them $150 to check into the VA so they could be in a study. Patients already in locked wards were offered cigarettes to participate.
Study coordinators, many with no medical training, determined whether a patient belonged in a study. According to an FDA investigation, untrained staff drew blood samples and adjusted doses of the drugs, and Borison and Diamond hardly ever saw the patients at all.
But the two researchers lived high off the hog, according to Georgia authorities. They socked away more than $5 million in cash and securities, spent nearly a half a million on antiques and drove Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
But as the old saying goes, all good things must end. In December, 1997, Diamond pleaded guilty to theft and bribery charges and was fined, $125,000, sentenced to 5 years in prison, and ordered to pay $1.1 million to the college.
Borison pleaded guilty to theft and racketeering charges, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, fined $125,000, and ordered to pay $4.26 million to the college.
To cover all bases, over the years, Big Pharma has also become adept at corrupting the judicial process.
For instance, Dr Bruce Levine, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and author of, "Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy," tells a story about Eli Lilly corrupting the judicial process in a case that began in 1989 when Joseph Wesbecker opened fire at his former place of employment, killing 8 people and wounding 12 more, before committing suicide, a month after he began taking Prozac. The victims of the shooting sued Eli Lilly, claiming that Prozac had pushed the guy over the edge.
It has long been known that Prozac induces violence in some patients but the FDA never required Lilly to list violence on the drug's label. But as it turns out, five of the 9 members on the 1991 FDA advisory panel investigating the association between Prozac and violence that voted against requiring a warning label for violence, had ties to Big Pharma and two of the members had served as lead investigators for Lilly-funded Prozac studies.
The Wesbecker trial did not take place until 1994, but in the meantime, according to Dr Levine, "Eli Lilly had been settling many Prozac violence cases behind closed doors."
In fact, he says, more than 150 Prozac lawsuits had been filed by the end of 1994, so "it was looking for a showcase trial that it could win."
A crucial component of the victims' legal strategy in the Wesbecker case was for the jury to hear about Lilly's history of reckless disregard toward consumers, especially about the drug Oraflex, introduced in 1982 but taken off the market 3 months later.
"A US Justice Department investigation linked Oraflex to the deaths of more than 100 patients," Dr Levine notes, "and concluded that Lilly had misled the FDA."
They simply opened an office across from the school, hired a commercial service to do ethical reviews of their studies, and placed their staff on the school's payroll but kept all the money for themselves.
As unbelievable as it may seem, the scheme worked for about 7 years. From 1989 to 1996, Borison and Diamond made over $10 million including more than $4 million from schizophrenia drugs, according to the indictment and testimony during an investigation by the Augusta Veterans Affairs Hospital, where Borison was chief of psychiatry.
And these guys were slick. To recruit the mostly male patients, they hired good-looking young women, who testified that they were paid bonuses that ran into the thousands, and one staffer was even given a Honda Accord.
Study coordinators, many with no medical training, determined whether a patient belonged in a study. According to an FDA investigation, untrained staff drew blood samples and adjusted doses of the drugs, and Borison and Diamond hardly ever saw the patients at all.
But the two researchers lived high off the hog, according to Georgia authorities. They socked away more than $5 million in cash and securities, spent nearly a half a million on antiques and drove Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
But as the old saying goes, all good things must end. In December, 1997, Diamond pleaded guilty to theft and bribery charges and was fined, $125,000, sentenced to 5 years in prison, and ordered to pay $1.1 million to the college.
Borison pleaded guilty to theft and racketeering charges, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, fined $125,000, and ordered to pay $4.26 million to the college.
To cover all bases, over the years, Big Pharma has also become adept at corrupting the judicial process.
For instance, Dr Bruce Levine, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and author of, "Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy," tells a story about Eli Lilly corrupting the judicial process in a case that began in 1989 when Joseph Wesbecker opened fire at his former place of employment, killing 8 people and wounding 12 more, before committing suicide, a month after he began taking Prozac. The victims of the shooting sued Eli Lilly, claiming that Prozac had pushed the guy over the edge.
It has long been known that Prozac induces violence in some patients but the FDA never required Lilly to list violence on the drug's label. But as it turns out, five of the 9 members on the 1991 FDA advisory panel investigating the association between Prozac and violence that voted against requiring a warning label for violence, had ties to Big Pharma and two of the members had served as lead investigators for Lilly-funded Prozac studies.
The Wesbecker trial did not take place until 1994, but in the meantime, according to Dr Levine, "Eli Lilly had been settling many Prozac violence cases behind closed doors."
In fact, he says, more than 150 Prozac lawsuits had been filed by the end of 1994, so "it was looking for a showcase trial that it could win."
A crucial component of the victims' legal strategy in the Wesbecker case was for the jury to hear about Lilly's history of reckless disregard toward consumers, especially about the drug Oraflex, introduced in 1982 but taken off the market 3 months later.
"A US Justice Department investigation linked Oraflex to the deaths of more than 100 patients," Dr Levine notes, "and concluded that Lilly had misled the FDA."
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