Suspected of having paid bribes to doctors to encourage them to prescribe its powerful opioid fentanyl, the American laboratory Insys Therapeutics will pay 225 million dollars.
After the Johnson & Johnson laboratory, it’s the turn of Insys Therapeutics. suspected of having paid bribing doctors to prescribe its powerful opioid fentanyl, thehe American laboratory agreed to pay 225 million dollars (200 million euros) and its subsidiary Insys Pharma to plead guilty to fraud in order to put an end to the legal proceedings initiated against itreports the New York Times.
Insys has “privileged its benefits to the health of thousands of patients”
“For years Insys has engaged in unlawful behavior by prioritizing its benefits over the health of thousands of patients,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling. “Today, the company is held accountable for that misconduct, and for its role in the opioid epidemic.” The Ministry of Justice clarified that “payments will be spread over five years”.
The opioid maker allegedly bribed doctors and used other illegal business practices to boost sales of its Subsys product, a mouth spray made with fentanyl, an opioid painkiller about 100 times more potent than morphine. Originally intended to relieve the suffering of people with cancer, the laboratory has made every effort to administer it to other patients, making them completely dependent.
“An irreversible spiral”
“Today, there are more overdoses among patients with chronic pain than among drug users”, alarmed recently in The Parisian Nicolas Authier, President of the French Observatory of Analgesic Medicines. Anyone can sink. “This is not a specific problem for drug users. We are talking here about women (60%) and men aged 40, 50, 60, with no history of drug use. Confronted with chronic pain, with some of the psychiatric comorbidities, for others family problems or at work, they find themselves drawn into the irreversible spiral of addiction”.
The American authorities have decided to turn against the pharmaceutical companies, accused of being at the origin of this health crisis which has claimed the lives of 200,000 Americans in recent years.
The opioid crisis linked to an increase in organ donations
The situation is such that the opioid crisis has led to a significant increase in heart transplants in the country. In 2017, of all heart transplants performed in 11 US states, more than 20% of donors died from an overdose (in 2000, less than 1% of donors died from this cause). The overdose was multiplied by 14 between 2000 and 2017.
Every year, 12 million French people are treated with opium-based drugs, including 1 million with strong opioids. Between 2004 and 2007, additional prescriptions for strong opioids, such as Oxycodone and Fentanyl, increased by 100% (500,000 additional prescriptions). As a result, overdose hospitalizations and the number of associated deaths have exploded since the 2000s (+167% and +146%).
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