Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19307

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Electronic Source

Silverman E
Peter Rost Takes Another Whack At Pfizer
Pharmalot 2011 Mar 11
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/03/peter-rost-takes-another-whack-at-pfizer/

Full text:

Some whistleblowers just won’t go away quietly. In his latest effort to bring his former employer to its knees, former Pfizer exec Peter Rost has filed a new lawsuit contending the drugmaker violated the New Jersey Conscientious Employee Protection Act by firing him after he told the feds about illegal marketing activities concerning the Genotropin human growth hormone.

The move comes six months after a federal judge dismissed the whistleblower lawsuit that Rost filed against Pfizer, although a federal appeals court subsequently left the door open for Rost to file his latest action in a state court venue (see here). And so he is seeking a trial, which raises the tantalizing possibility that the long-running saga will finally get a public airing, and unspecified damages.

For those who may not recall, Rost blazed a controversial trail over the past several years as he pressed his case and, in the process, gained notoriety for, among other things, appearing on Capitol Hill and on national television to argue that the pharmaceutical industry was incorrect to fight reimportation of medicines. Drugmakers say importation is a safety issue, while Rost argued the debate was really about maintaining higher prices in the US, a view shared by some lawmakers (see this).

His saga began in 2002, when he joined Pharmacia as a vice president in charge of endocrine products, including Genotropin, although within a year, Pfizer acquired the drugmaker. As the integration process unfolded, however, he repeatedly informed various Pfizer and Pharmacia execs of questionable marketing activities he claimed to have uncovered, including kickbacks to doctors and reporting false claims to government health care programs, according to court documents.

During this period, stories ran in the media that Rost filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Wyeth, where he previously worked, and that the US Securities and Exchange Commission had begun investigating those allegations. A few months earlier, Pfizer senior vp Marie-Caroline Sainpy wrote Rost that “there was no question whatsoever on our side with your being considered for several positions.” After the stories, she appeared to have changed her mind and wrote him that he would not fit in the new marketing organization, the suit maintains.

From there, things got tense. Rost maintains Pfizer hired a private eye to probe his finances, emotional well being and whether he owned a gun, along with monitoring his office calls and email. Meanwhile, he filed a whistleblower lawsuit and recommended in writing to former Pfizer ceo Jeff Kindler, who was general counsel at the time, that Pfizer should make a deal with the feds. In 2004, the drugmaker learned of his lawsuit and testimony, and by early 2005, he was terminated, the suit states (read the lawsuit).

Pfizer, however, did get tagged by the Department of Justice. In 2007, the drugmaker paid a total of $35 million in fines for offering kickbacks to physicians and off-label marketing of Genotropin (back story here). Meanwhile, Rost pressed his whistleblower case, but ultimately failed to clear all the legal hurdles. Along the way, the Justice Department declined to intervene, or join, his case.

For those wondering what Rost does these days, by the way, he is currently a consultant providing testimony and advice to attorneys engaged in pharmaceutical litigation (see this).