Pfizer paying out millions, again, to settle off-label promotion charges
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Once again, US pharma giant Pfizer found itself having to pay out millions to the US federal government and states to settle charges of illegal promotion of the company's medicines, with the latest settlements totaling about $98 million – a far cry from the $2.3 billion the New York drug maker paid under a 2009 guilty plea for promoting its cyclooxygenase-2-selective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug Bextra (valdecoxib), but still a tidy sum of cash.