An addiction is a situation where a person becomes so attached to a particular object that he puts aside normal restraints and concerns and becomes entirely obsessed by obtaining the item to which he has become addicted.
Now, all companies strive for success, but if the price of that success includes harming others, it might just be that the success became too much of an obsession.
Of all people, one would think that a pharmaceutical company would be the ones to understand and know all about addictions, since some of their products, not by any fault of theirs, end up being the objects people are addicted to. Unfortunately, it looks like some of the people at Johnson and Johnson got a little too carried away with their desire for success in marketing their product called Risperdal.
Risperdal is an anti-psychotic drug prescribed by doctors in certain situations. According to a March 8, 2011 story at Bloomburg.com, “Officials of J&J [Johnson and Johnson] made misleading claims about Risperdal’s health risks in a letter sent to South Carolina regulators and doctors to protect sales of a medicine that generated $33 billion in revenue for the drugmaker during a 13-year period.”
The Food and Drug Administration claims that Johnson and Johnson minimized “the risk of hyperglycemia-related adverse events” that can lead to coma or death. They further stated that J & J failed to recommend glucose control monitoring for patients, and misleadingly claimed Risperdal was “safer than other atypical antipsychotics.” It increases the risk of diabetes and its related problems.
We are talking about billions of dollars in sales, here, folks. $33 billion in revenue for Johnson and Johnson, by persuading doctors to prescribe this medicine via Medicaid.
The jury here in South Carolina found Johnson and Johnson guilty, and a judge will soon decide what the penalty will be. A similar court case was lodged and lost by Pennsylvania, and others in Louisiana and West Virginia were won by each state, costing Johnson and Johnson $257.7 and $3.95 million, respectively.
These millions sound like a lot, but compared to the billions that were made on the product, it’s a grain of sand in the litter box. Of course, the ones who really lost out were the patients who suffered the side effects of Risperdal. One can only hope that some of the money from the lawsuits will trickle down to them.
