Thaindian News

Apr 28 (THAINDIAN NEWS) On Tuesday an agreement was reached between the federal government and AstraZeneka which dictates that the drug maker pays a whopping 520 million dollars to resolve allegations that the company was involved in the illegal marketing and selling of AstaZeneka’s anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel.

Attorney General, Eric Holder and the Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius both used the case as a centerpiece for the federal government’s crackdown on health care fraud at a recent news conference. Seroquel was allegedly marketed for off label uses, which means uses that are not approved by the federal government. Among those uses were insomnia, and unapproved psychiatric conditions. The only approved conditions for Seroquel use were schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. U.S. Attorney Michael Levy of Philadelphia, where the settlement was filed, said that the company had “turned patients into guinea pigs in an unsupervised drug test.”

AstraZeneca is now facing more than 25,000 lawsuits for product liability lawsuits, all over the drug Seroquel. The drug has been on the market since 1997, which is a very long time for the dangers which are being suggested to be passed out to patients. The most serious cases allege that the drug causes diabetes. The government is saying that the drug company was paying kickbacks to physicians who had been recruited to write articles by Astra Zeneka about the uses of Seroquel which were not approved by the FDA. They also are accused of paying doctors to travel to resorts and give advice to Astra Zeneka’s agents on how to market the drug for uses which did not have government approval.

Although the company denied the allegations which had been made by the government in the civil case, they agreed to the settlement on Tuesday, agreeing to pay the 520 million dollars. They claimed that their reasons for the settlement was they “wanted to avoid the delay, uncertainty and expense of a protracted legal battle.” “The company is committed to meeting the expectations and obligations of a leading biopharmaceutical company, while continuing to provide valuable medicines to millions of patients,” Glenn Engelmann, the company’s U.S. general counsel, said in a statement.