Congratulations, Pfizer, You Are Now Officially a “Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization”

Thanks yet again to Dr. Roy Poses over at Health Care Renewal—
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/12/blogscan-us-supreme-court-turns-down.html
--for picking up from some of our fellow bloggers this latest news tidbit about drug giant Pfizer.

In the past I have blogged (again thanks to Dr. Poses) about Pfizer’s rather amazing record of criminal wrongdoing:

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2012/12/doing-it-again-after-pomising-not-to.html

I have also agreed that the word “corruption” is the correct term for much of what we see in today’s drug industry:

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2013/09/special-journal-issue-institutional.html

And finally, I recently commented on the book by Dr. Peter Gøtzsche in which he compares the drug industry with organized crime:

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2013/11/deadly-medicines-over-top-or-overdue.html

So, by way of commentary for anyone who thinks that all the above is unjustified piling on, Dr. Poses reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a 2010 conviction of Pfizer in which the company was found guilty to violating the RICO law, and therefore was found to constitute a “racketeering influenced corrupt organization.” With the high court’s refusal to hear an appeal, the original verdict now stands for all time.

As Dr. Poses has repeated until he is blue in the face (as probably most people in New England are these days given the weather they’re having), when an organization is found guilty of RICO violations, one normally expects that some of the people who run the place are going to end up in jail. We are of course still waiting for that day to come to the drug industry. In the meantime all the big execs will presumably continue to take home their multi-million-dollar bonuses.