SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
OxyContin maker said to be brokering plea deal in criminal probe:
Purdue Pharma LP, the OxyContin maker controlled by members of the wealthy Sackler family, is nearing an agreement to plead guilty to criminal charges as part of a broader deal to resolve United States Justice Department probes into its alleged role in fuelling the nation's opioid crisis, six people familiar with the matter said.
Purdue lawyers and federal prosecutors are brokering a plea deal that could be unveiled as quickly as within the next two weeks and include billions of dollars of financial penalties, four of the people said. They stressed that talks are fluid and that some of the terms could change as discussions continue.
In addition to the criminal case, US prosecutors are negotiating a settlement of civil claims also carrying a financial penalty that allege unlawful conduct in Purdue's handling of prescription painkillers, they said.
The Stamford, Connecticut-based company is expected to face penalties exceeding $8bn. They consist of a roughly $3.54bn criminal fine, $2bn criminal forfeiture and $2.8bn civil penalty, some of the people familiar with the negotiations said.
They are unlikely to be paid in the near term as the criminal fine and civil penalty are expected to be considered alongside other claims in Purdue's bankruptcy proceedings and the company lacks the necessary funds to fully repay all creditors.
The tentative agreement would draw a line under Purdue's criminal exposure for what prosecutors and state attorneys general have described as aggressive marketing of a highly-addictive painkiller that minimised the drug's potential for abuse and overdosing.
[...] The outcome of settlement talks among Purdue, its owners and litigants will help determine how much money US communities receive to address the toll from opioids.
In earlier filings made as part of Purdue's bankruptcy case, federal prosecutors alleged the company at times paid doctors and pharmacies illegal kickbacks between 2010 and 2018 to encourage medically unnecessary opioid prescriptions, resulting in fraudulent claims to government healthcare programmes such as Medicare.
Purdue has offered to settle widespread litigation in a deal it values at more than $10bn, much of it linked to drugs under development to treat addiction and combat overdoses. One contentious aspect of the proposal is that some of the funds would come from continued OxyContin sales.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2020, @09:57AM (3 children)
This is a disgrace to the profession of medicine. Here we see an example of a large number of physicians (medical doctors) who have all selfishly participated in very profitable, corrupt prescribing of addictive opioid drugs with several detrimental effects on individuals and society, resulting in harm and even deaths of their patients. None of those physicians has been publically identified, shamed into public apology, or professionally sanctioned. The Hippocratic Oath has no meaning for them.
Yet, survey after survey repeatedly confirms that physicians (medical doctors) enjoy one of the highest of all professional reputations in the eyes of the general public.
In many countries, physicians have created legal structures to protect themselves, for example, by having professional bodies that are recognized in law as having the power to judge their own members whose professional standards and ethics have been subject to complaints or criticism. These professional bodies, however, very rarely sanction physicians and even more rarely disqualify them from practising medicine. For example, there have been recent cases in the UK of surgeons with over 200 complaints, both from patients and even from their professional colleagues, of grossly substandard, disfiguring, or even lethal surgery who were allowed to practise for over a 10 years before being sanctioned, but none was disqualified from medicine.
This situation seems unlikely to change for the better until all physicians are replaced in the far future by AI and robots, which will certainly eventually happen, for cost reasons alone.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 08 2020, @02:18PM
There is another side effect to this unethical behavior.
People who actually need narcotic pain killers now find it more difficult to get them. Some physicians are less likely to prescribe them unless they really know that you are not drug seeking and your condition is real. That's okay for someone who's condition makes it physically obvious that they live with pain. Pity the patients where their pain is not obvious. Hopefully they have enough other measurable conditions to warrant a diagnosis that supports their claims of pain.
When there is a long term condition, it is good to have a long term relationship with at least a primary care doctor and a specialist for your condition. Both of which who would be willing to prescribe your pain medications -- but only ONE of which should be doing so.
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2020, @05:18PM (1 child)
The physicians were systematically deceived by the Sackler minions. They were lied to by experts who closely studied, and thus got VERY good at, deceiving physicians. Said experts were provided staff and budgets to make it happen.
How long do you think anyone could resist if a team of trained experts with a budget tried to suggest something to them?
Take your lies elsewhere, hopefully to die in a fire. Take your bullshit AI with you too. Finding statistical correlations is no substitute for training, skill, casuistry, and understanding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 08 2020, @06:35PM
Why would deception be required? The drug is clearly labeled OxyContin with all its active components listed. The physicians understand very well, without needing to be deceived, everything one needs to know about opiate-containing medication such as OxyContin.
I'm not talking about what you seem to think "AI" means. I'm talking about what "AI" means to intelligent people who understand the long-term goal of AI is to build human-equivalent artificial intelligence with human-equivalent emotional intelligence sufficient to pass the Turing Test.