Posts Tagged ‘ Drug Marketing ’

Week Adjourned: 11.26.11

November 28th, 2011. By LucyC

Top Class Actions

Do you know who’s got your personal information? An unfair business practices class action lawsuit has been filed in the Southern District Court of Florida against Best Buy Corporation for violating the Drivers’ Privacy Protection Act or “DPPA”, a federal statute that protects the privacy of personal information assembled by State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMVs).

The lawsuit alleges Best Buy has established a business practice of taking, storing, using and/or sharing customers’ personal or highly restricted personal information, without consent, when customers make a normal return of Best Buy merchandise. Their receipt indicates that Best Buy “tracks exchanges and returns … and some of the information from your ID may be stored in a secure, encrypted database of customer activity that Best Buy and its affiliates use to track exchanges and returns.”

The DPPA specifically prohibits Best Buy’s conduct and was instituted to protect consumers from abuses such as identify theft and stalking, which often result when information is unsecured and improperly stored. The class action alleges that Best Buy’s retention of data accessed on a driver’s license is not “use in the normal course of business” as described by the DPPA.

Top Settlements

What’s that old adage—if it sounds too good to be true… Power Balance LLC, the company that made Power Balance bracelets, has reportedly settled a consumer fraud class action lawsuit this week for $57.4 million and filed for federal bankruptcy protection. The details and amount of the Power Balance settlement remain to be confirmed, although it’s all over the Internet.

The company was sued over allegations of misleading advertising, advertising that allegedly claimed the hologram-embedded rubber bracelets enabled the wearers to “achieve their best,” a statement that begs the question—best what? Best outlandish claim? Possibly. Although the company claims there’s science to back up the statement. I have one word—and it’s “placebo.”

About time: Merck Vioxx settlement. There’s not much that’s funny about this. Merck, Sharp & Dohme has agreed to pay $950 million to resolve criminal charges and civil claims related to its promotion and marketing of the painkiller Vioxx (rofecoxib), the Justice Department announced. The FDA approved Vioxx for three indications in May 1999, but did not approve its use against rheumatoid arthritis until April 2002. In the interim, for nearly three years, Merck promoted Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis, conduct for which it was admonished in an FDA warning letter issued in September 2001.

Merck is also entering into a civil settlement agreement under which it will pay $628,364,000 to resolve additional allegations regarding off-label marketing of Vioxx and false statements about the drug’s cardiovascular safety. Of the total civil settlement, $426,389,000 will be recovered by the United States, and the remaining share of $201,975,000 will be distributed to the participating Medicaid states. The settlement and plea conclude a long-running investigation of Merck’s promotion of Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the marketplace in September 2004.

The parallel civil settlement covers a broader range of allegedly illegal conduct by Merck. The settlement resolves allegations that Merck representatives made inaccurate, unsupported, or misleading statements about Vioxx’s cardiovascular safety in order to increase sales of the drug, resulting in payments by the federal government. It also resolves allegations that Merck made false statements to state Medicaid agencies about the cardiovascular safety of Vioxx, and that those agencies relied on Merck’s false claims in making payment decisions about the drug. Finally, like the criminal plea, the civil settlement also recovers damages for allegedly false claims caused by Merck’s unlawful promotion of Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis.

Ok—That’s the week that was. Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Tags: Best Buy, Best Buy Privacy Lawsuit, DPPA, Drivers Privacy Protection Act, Drug Marketing, FDA, Merck, Off Label Marketing, Power Balance Lawsuit, Power Balance Settlement, Vioxx Settlement
Posted in Class Action, lawsuits, Settlement, Week Adjourned | 9117No Comments »Week+Adjourned%3A+11.26.112011-11-28+15%3A42%3A16LucyC

Pharmaceutical Companies Want YOU to Want Them

January 21st, 2010. By Kristine B

Last week, we saw how pharmaceutical companies target medical professionals in their marketing. This week, Pleading Ignorance looks at how they target you, the patient.

When you are targeted in an advertisement or marketing plan for pharmaceuticals, that’s called direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). Now, it may seem a bit silly for pharmaceutical companies to target patients—after all, the patient has to rely on the doctor to first diagnose a health problem and then prescribe the medication. pleading ignorance copy2 Pharmaceutical Companies Want YOU to Want Them

But, if you notice, the tv ads encourage you to “talk to your doctor about [insert name of drug here].” They expect that you will see the ad, identify with the list of symptoms or the general health issue mentioned, and go straight to the doctor, demanding you get a prescription for that particular drug.

So, if consumers are being given the drugs they want and need, is there really a problem with DTCA?

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL,ncsl.org), there are concerns about DTCA advertising.

One concern is that the costs of drugs are “soaring” (their word) and becoming more and more difficult for people Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Drug Marketing, FDA, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Pleading Ignorance
Posted in Pleading Ignorance | 25082 Comments »2010-01-21+21%3A01%3A08Kristine+B

Pleading Ignorant on Drug Marketing

January 13th, 2010. By Kristine B

Last week, Pleading Ignorance briefly looked at what “off-label” means when talking about drugs. This week, I thought I’d take a slightly more in-depth look at drug marketing—starting with how pharmaceutical companies market drugs to doctors. You sort of already know how drugs are marketed to consumers (i.e., YOU) because you see the ads. But pharmaceutical marketing to physicians is a little less transparent. So let’s talk about it. pleading ignorance copy1 Pleading Ignorant on Drug Marketing

Drug companies have two target audiences that they market their drugs to: the doctors, which makes sense because the doctors are the ones who write the prescriptions; and you, the consumer. That’s why, more and more frequently, you see ads on tv telling you to talk to your doctor about a certain drug. How often do you watch tv and see some sort of ad that starts off “Do you feel down?” or “Are you in pain?” Drug companies know that if you said “yes” to those questions you might just go in to your doctor and ask about the drugs they’re advertising. But it’s not so easy to do that with the doctors.

Marketing to doctors is definitely different from marketing to consumers (I can’t imagine too many doctors would respond to a tv ad that says, “Does your patient feel down?”). Marketing to doctors is more about scientific information. That’s all the somewhat boring stuff—found on the monograph for the drug—that lists things like “Indications” or “Adverse Events” or “Co-morbitidy,” stuff that the scientists understand but we may not. There are Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Drug Marketing, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Pleading Ignorance
Posted in Emerging Issues, Pleading Ignorance | 2416No Comments »Pleading+Ignorant+on+Drug+Marketing2010-01-13+23%3A19%3A21Kristine+B