I am going to be very, very rich (False Claims Act- "Lyme Disease")
Mort Zuckerman
Aa...@columbia.edu, gary_w...@nymc.edu,
scientifi...@ostp.gov, pkru...@princeton.edu,
Stanle...@fiu.edu, emcsw...@niaid.nih.gov, afa...@niaid.nih.gov,
Spin...@yahoogroups.com, kshe...@calea.org, fit...@gmail.com,
patrick.f...@usdoj.gov, model...@sbcglobal.net,
jdr...@nejm.org, let...@courant.com, Jgerb...@cdc.gov,
michae...@po.state.ct.us, con...@po.state.ct.us, executive-
edi...@nytimes.com, managin...@nytimes.com, news-
ti...@nytimes.com, biz...@nytimes.com, for...@nytimes.com,
nati...@nytimes.com, dv...@cdc.gov, brigidc...@optonline.net,
tr...@hotmail.com, illino...@aol.com, jle...@courant.com,
tinaj...@yahoo.com, jhorn...@fff.org, thomas...@usdoj.gov,
thoma...@po.state.ct.us, kur...@washpost.com,
georg...@washpost.com, p...@allegorypress.com,
commissi...@po.state.ct.us, brans...@comcast.net,
vts...@comcast.net, o...@po.state.ct.us, freet...@charter.net,
scott....@po.state.ct.us, govern...@po.state.ct.us,
attorney...@po.state.ct.us, randall...@usdoj.gov,
Robert....@yale.edu, edi...@greenwich-post.com,
harol...@yale.edu, sedm...@nswbc.org, rrmcg...@aol.com
Cc: fra...@ucia.gov, dr-ahma...@president.ir,
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bmi...@newstimes.com, tr...@hotmail.com, rast...@aol.com,
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paulcrai...@yahoo.com, sidney_b...@yahoo.com,
criminal...@usdoj.gov, karla.d...@usdoj.gov,
christophe...@usdoj.gov, richar...@yale.edu,
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bob.d...@latimes.com
Subject: I am going to be very, very rich (False Claims Act- "Lyme
Disease")
Date: Sep 3, 2009 12:25 AM
NIH, September, 1999:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Actionlyme_History.htm
FDA, Jam 2001:
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/01/slides/3680s2_11.pdf
USDOJ, July, 2003:
http://www.actionlyme.org/USDOJ_COMPLAINT_RICO.htm
Yale owns a scientifically valid test for Lyme:
http://www.actionlyme.org/SV_PPT_2.htm
That's how many dead people, now?
Include all the non-discovery re Pam3Cys:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PPT_PAM_1/PresPam16.ppt
Tuberculosis, cancer, MS, ALS, HIV vaccine...
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
----------------------------------------------
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN021592920090902?sp=true
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Taking on corporate giants can feel like tilting
at windmills, but John Kopchinski's six-year legal battle against
Pfizer Inc just made him a rich man.
The Gulf War veteran and former Pfizer sales representative will earn
more than $51.5 million as a result of his whistleblower lawsuit
against the world's biggest drugmaker and the record penalty the
company must pay the U.S. government for its massive marketing
transgressions.
The unassuming Texas resident celebrated his windfall by having a
family portrait photograph taken Wednesday morning.
"We're going to be staying right here in San Antonio in the same
house, and my wife tells me when we go to the movies we're still
getting one tub of popcorn -- the large tub," Kopchinski said in a
telephone interview.
Kopchinski, appalled by Pfizer's tactics in selling the pain drug
Bextra, filed a "qui tam" lawsuit in 2003, sparking federal and state
probes that led to Wednesday's agreement by the company to pay $2.3
billion in civil and criminal penalties and plead guilty to a felony
charge for promoting Bextra and 12 other drugs for unapproved uses and
doses.
"In the Army I was expected to protect people at all costs,"
Kopchinski said in a statement. "At Pfizer I was expected to increase
profits at all costs, even when sales meant endangering lives.
"I couldn't do that," added Kopchinski, 45, who was fired by Pfizer in
March of 2003, two years before the company pulled Bextra from the
market over concerns it raised the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
At the time of his dismissal after raising his concerns with the
company, Kopchinski had a baby son and his wife was pregnant with
twins. He went from earning about $125,000 a year to living off his
retirement fund before landing a job with an insurance company for
$40,000 a year.
"It was a lot of stress on the family. I pretty much depleted my
entire 401(k)," he said.
"The last six years have been pretty hard, so going forward it's going
to be pretty much easier," said Kopchinski, noting that college for
his young children "is taken care of."
Erika Kelton, Kopchinski's lead attorney from the firm of Phillips &
Cohen LLP, said large rewards are justified because of what
whistleblowers must endure, often for many years, after complaints
within the company go unheeded.
"Particularly in pharma, it's no secret that it's an industry that can
blackball former employees," Kelton said, "so the reward is important
both to encourage people to step forward and to recognize that their
contributions are huge."
Kopchinski and five other whistleblowers will earn more than $102
million in payments from the U.S. government under the False Claims
Act through which individuals can reap rewards for exposing corporate
wrongdoing.
"The use of whistleblowers has really opened up the keys to the
kingdom in terms of what's going on in these companies," said Dean
Zerbe, senior counsel for the National Whistleblower Center and a
partner at the law firm of Zerbe, Fingeret, Frank and Jadav in
Washington.
"You'd never find out what's happening without this kind of reward
structure," Zerbe said.
Kopchinski was hired by former Pfizer CEO Edward Pratt in 1992 after
carrying out a correspondence with him while serving as a platoon
leader in a military police company on the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait border
during the Gulf War.
Under a later Pfizer regime, he was selling the epilepsy drug
Neurontin when a previous whistleblower suit was filed against the
company over similar illegal promotion tactics that led to stiff
penalties and a form of corporate probation.
At the time he was told by managers that the Neurontin suit would be
in the news and any physicians who asked questions should be told it
was just complaints from a disgruntled former employee, Kopchinski
said. Ironically, after filing the Bextra suit, "I was the disgruntled
former employee," he said.
"What you see here is a company which essentially had a culture of
corruption," said Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against
Fraud, a U.S. nonprofit organization that helps connect whistleblowers
with attorneys on False Claims Act cases. He called the $2.3 billion
settlement "a jaw-dropping amount of money."
The size of the whistleblower rewards announced Wednesday are already
having an impact.
"I'm seeing it first-hand myself. I've gotten phone calls this
morning," said Zerbe, who was approached by an employee of a hospital
who claimed that it was overbilling the government, including charging
for products it had received for free.
Despite the potential for huge rewards, however, life can be hellish
for whistleblowers.
"If this was so easy everyone would be a millionaire," Burns said.
(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Gary Hill)
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci