Austin American Statesman State's
mental facilities duped into using drug
Abbott alleges Lawsuit claims state
official pushed drug, was rewarded with money.
By Jason Embry, W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
December 16, 2006
A major corporation and several
subsidiaries misrepresented the safety and effectiveness of an
anti-psychotic drug and unduly influenced at least one state
official to make it a standard treatment in public mental health
programs, according to a lawsuit the state has joined.
Attorney General Greg Abbott joined
a lawsuit filed in Travis County district court by Allen Jones, a
former investigator for the state of Pennsylvania, against Johnson &
Johnson Inc. and five related companies. Jones says in the lawsuit
that he learned of payments to at least one Texas mental health
official in interviews he conducted as an investigator. No official
is named in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which came to light
Friday, seeks to recover for the state untallied alleged overcharges
to the state's Medicaid program, which pays for health care for
low-income people.
Jones' lawsuit alleges that the
companies launched a drug named Risperdal in 1994 to treat
schizophrenia. About the same time, the state was developing a
protocol, or treatment guidelines, for which drugs should be used in
public mental health programs. The defendants "provided substantial
financial contributions to and improperly influenced the
development" of the protocols, the lawsuit said, and Risperdal took
precedence in the protocols over cheaper, equally effective
medicines.
The drug later received
recommendations as the medicine of choice in the state's mental
health protocol for treating children and adolescents, even though
it lacked a Food and Drug Administration indication for those age
groups, the lawsuit says. It says side effects and health risks
include increased chance of stroke, renal failure and hyperglycemia.
The companies pushed Risperdal in
other states through paid consultants on expert panels, peer-to-peer
marketing strategies and "administrative decisions made by a select
few public officials," the lawsuit says. The companies sent an
unnamed Texas official around the country as a spokesman for the
drug, and they hired third-party contractors to conceal their
control and funding of medical education programs, speakers' bureaus
and clinical research that promoted the benefits and safety of
Risperdal, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says at least 17
states, including Texas, have implemented the protocol or are doing
so.
"We allege it's a scheme whereby
they passed off as medical science phony representations and
misleading facts about the efficacy and appropriateness of these
drugs," said Thomas Melsheimer, a lawyer for Jones.
Abbott's office declined to comment
on the lawsuit, as did spokesmen for Johnson & Johnson and the
state's Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees the
Medicaid program. A commission spokesman did say Texas paid 308,000
claims totaling $73.5 million for Risperdal in 2005.
Melsheimer described Jones as a
"classic whistle-blower" who filed the lawsuit in 2004 on behalf of
Texas to recover the companies' overcharges. Because of his
whistle-blower status, the lawsuit was sealed from public view until
Abbott joined it.
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/12/16/16drugs.html
|
