Female and elder
consumers and payers
sue Pfizer over deceptive marketing of Lipitor®
Plaintiffs allege promotional
scheme to boost sales of world's best-selling drug by
misleading women and seniors about link between the drug and
heart disease
Boston – Consumers have
filed the first-of-its-kind nationwide class-action lawsuit
against Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), claiming the world"s largest
drug company misled consumers into using its
anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor despite the absence of
evidence from clinical trials that these drugs are of any
benefit to large segments of the population.
According to Steve Berman,
the lead attorney for the proposed class, Pfizer promoted
Lipitor by claiming it prevents heart disease in women and
the elderly, where no clinical test has established such a
benefit. In fact, according to the complaint, women without
heart disease taking Lipitor actually developed 10 percent
more heart attacks than women treated with a placebo.
The lawsuit alleges that
Pfizer engaged in a massive campaign to convince both
doctors and patients that Lipitor is a beneficial treatment
for nearly everyone with elevated cholesterol, even though
no studies have shown it to be effective for women and those
over 65 years of age who do not already have heart disease
or diabetes.
Normally, drugs become
widely used as treatments for patients only when a
well-designed clinical trial finds that the drug is safe and
effective for patients of the same type and age. No such
trial has shown that Lipitor helps the elderly or females
without prior heart disease. "We believe Pfizer
intentionally ignored the scientific evidence – and lack
thereof – and launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign
designed to push the drug to anyone they could convince to
buy it,” Berman said. “We intend to prove that Pfizer
pocketed billions in sales to those who do not benefit from
Lipitor.”
Lipitor is in the class of
cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins and it is the
best-selling drug in the world, with sales in 2004 of more
than $10 billion.
According to John Abramson
MD, clinical instructor of ambulatory care at Harvard
Medical School and author of Overdosed America: The
Broken Promise of American Medicine, the scientific
picture is clear.
“The idea that lowering
cholesterol always reduces the risk of heart disease has
become the conventional wisdom, which drug companies like
Pfizer have taken great pains to promote. But for women
under 65 and people over 65 with no history of heart disease
or diabetes, the evidence just isn’t there,” Abramson said.
“Millions of women and seniors are spending huge sums to
take Lipitor every day despite a lack of proof that it’s
doing anything beneficial for them, and may actually be
harming the elderly.”
Alex Sugerman-Brozan,
director of the Prescription Access Litigation Project,
added, “We believe that the evidence will shine light on the
ways that drug companies like Pfizer work to manipulate most
of what we know about prescription drugs, from the research
to the guidelines that doctors follow.” One of the
organizations suing Pfizer, Health Care For All, is a member
of the Prescription Access Litigation Project.
The suit claims that
Pfizer’s promotional campaign has resulted in billions of
dollars in unnecessary drug spending among these two groups
of patients at a time when drug and general healthcare costs
are spiraling out of control.
Nancy Yost, one of the
plaintiffs in the lawsuit, is a 73-year-old woman with no
history of heart disease who has been taking Lipitor for
several years. “With the high cost of prescription drugs
today, no seniors I know can afford to pay for a drug that
doesn’t do what it promises,” Ms. Yost said. “I’m
disappointed that Pfizer is spending millions to convince
seniors to pay top dollar for a drug without full disclosure
of its effectiveness. It shows that the drug industry’s
priorities are skewed when they spend twice as much on
marketing as they do on research.”
Health Care For All noted
the high economic cost to taxpayers. “We all pay the price
for the over-prescription of drugs, like Lipitor, because we
have to foot much of the bill for state pharmacy programs
for seniors and soon for the Medicare drug benefit,” said
Melissa Shannon, Consumer Health Policy Coordinator of
Health Care For All. “We can’t allow drug companies to
trick seniors into taking expensive, unnecessary drugs that
will drive up the already-high costs that Medicare will be
paying for seniors’ drugs.”
According to the ASCOT
study, the largest clinical trial of the effectiveness of
statin therapy in women, there is reason to be concerned.
The study of 2000 women at increased risk of developing
heart disease found that the women who took Lipitor
developed 10% more heart attacks than the women who took a
placebo.
The proposed class action
seeks to represent women who have taken Lipitor and who have
no history of heart disease or diabetes; people aged 65 and
over who have taken Lipitor and who have no history of heart
disease or diabetes; and third-party payers such as
insurance companies, union health and welfare funds,
self-insured employers and others, who paid for Lipitor for
patients in either of these two groups.
The lawsuit alleges
that Pfizer violated state consumer protection laws against
deceptive advertising and seeks reimbursement for women and
seniors
and third-party payers
who bought Lipitor unnecessarily as a result of Pfizer’s
deceptive marketing and promotional campaign. “We intend to
prove in this case that Pfizer’s false advertising created
an enormous artificial demand for Lipitor, much of which
would not exist if Pfizer had fully and fairly disclosed the
truth about the drug” said Berman.
The lawsuit, filed in the
U.S. District Court in Boston, was filed by Steve Berman,
managing partner of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, on behalf
of several individuals, Health Care For All, and the
Teamsters.
About Prescription Access
Litigation Project
Prescription Access Litigation Project (PAL) is a project
of Boston-based Community Catalyst. PAL is a nationwide
coalition of over 110 state, local, and national senior,
labor and consumer health advocacy groups in 35 states
fighting to make prescription drugs affordable. Since its
launch in 2001, PAL members have filed 23 sets of lawsuits
targeting drug industry practices that illegally push the
price of prescription drugs beyond the reach of the American
consumer.
About Community
Catalyst
Community Catalyst (www.communitycatalyst.org)
is a Boston-based national advocacy organization that builds
consumer and community participation in the shaping of our
health system to ensure quality, affordable health care for
all.
About Health Care
For All
Health Care For All (http://www.hcfama.org)
is a consumer advocacy organization building a movement of
empowered people and organizations with the goal of creating
a health care system that is responsive to the needs of all
people, particularly the most vulnerable. Health Care For
All is dedicated to making quality health care a right of
all people.
About Hagens Berman Sobol
Shapiro
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro is a law firm with offices in
Seattle, Cambridge, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The firm has
developed a nationally recognized practice in class-action
litigation. The firm is co-lead counsel in litigation to
recover losses from Enron employees' retirement funds and
represented Washington and 12 other states in lawsuits
against the tobacco industry that resulted in the largest
settlement in the history of litigation. The firm also
served as counsel in several other high-profile cases
including the Washington Public Power Supply litigation,
which resulted in a settlement of more than $850 million,
and the $92.5 million settlement of The Boeing Company
litigation. Other notable cases include litigation involving
the Exxon Valdez oil spill; Louisiana Pacific Siding;
Morrison Knudsen; Piper Jaffray; Nordstrom; Boston Chicken;
Noah's Bagels; TAP Pharmaceutical’s Lupron litigation; and
SmithKline Beecham’s Paxil Litigation.