Pfizer unit marketed drug illegally, ex-employee says

Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk - Bloomberg

28 Jul, 2009

Pfizer Inc.’s Warner-Lambert unit created a list of 13 ailments that its epilepsy medicine Neurontin could treat as part of its promotion of the drug for unapproved uses, a former employee testified.

“I was trained from day one” to market the drug illegally, David Franklin testified. Franklin, who worked as a medical liaison at the Parke-Davis division of Warner-Lambert, said he encouraged doctors to prescribe Neurontin for uses beyond those approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“My job was to promote Neurontin and motivate doctors to experiment” on patients, he said today in federal court in Boston. After being hired as a medical liaison, “I was selling drugs,” he said. The uses promoted were from the “snake-oil list” of 13 medical conditions, said Franklin, a microbiologist.

Franklin was the first witness in the trial over claims by the family of Susan Bulger, 39, who hanged herself after taking the drug. Bulger’s family claims Pfizer promoted Neurontin for unapproved uses and failed to warn it could increase the risk of suicide until forced to do so by the government. Bulger started taking the drug in 1999.

The trial of the suit, the first of about 1,200 over Neurontin to go to trial, is expected to last three weeks.

Pfizer fell 59 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $16.03 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Pfizer shares have fallen 9.5 percent so far this year.

Whistleblower Suit

Franklin filed a federal whistleblower complaint in 1997 alleging the company illegally marketed the drug for attention deficit disorder, pain and other unapproved uses. The suit resulted in a $430 million settlement by Warner-Lambert with the U.S. Justice Department in 2004.

Franklin, who worked at Warner Lambert for four months in 1995 before resigning over the company’s off-label marketing practices, received about $25 million as his share under the federal False Claims Act, the government said at the time.

Warner-Lambert officials used a variety of tactics to persuade doctors to prescribe Neurontin for unapproved uses, Franklin told jurors.

They provided the company’s sales force with a list of ailments that would benefit from Neurontin use, including restless leg syndrome, migraine headaches and withdrawal symptoms from drug and alcohol abuse, Franklin said. The FDA hadn’t approved the drug for any of those illnesses at the time, he added.

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