Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer Executive
This November 8th, Dr. Scott Gottlieb “former head of the FDA” appeared on Face the Nation talking about the COVID pandemic and the hope of a vaccine, for which the U.S. government has already put up $2 billion for Pfizer’s version. The story failed to mention that Gottlieb – who was supposed to be our FDA watchdog over drugs and medical devices – was formerly an advisor to pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Daiichi Sankyo, and is now an executive for Pfizer.
According to the New York Times, products regulated by the FDA account for 20 cents of every dollar spent by American consumers each year, and yet Gottlieb was an advocate of FDA deregulation. Then, less than two years later Gottlieb – with people dying of opioid addiction, prices on pharmaceuticals skyrocketing, Congress raking in BigPharma campaign money and one-sixth of the American public taking useless and dangerous antidepressants – resigned because he “wanted to spend more time with his family. Predictably, two months later, he passed through the “BigPharma revolving door” and joined Pfizer’s Board of Directors. He’ll now make the really big bucks and help the drug maker speed new drugs, such as the COVID vaccine, through FDA approvals in the “good old boy” network. Pfizer, for example, spent $219 million in lobbying expenses and $23 million in campaign contributions on the federal government between 1999 and 2016.
Gottlieb will make a minimum of $335,000 a year if last year’s salaries hold, probably much more for his prize stash of FDA intelligence and inside information – especially as the COVID vaccination pot of gold is readied for release.
Gottlieb was also in charge of implementing the 21st Century Cures Act – which the LA Times calls “a huge deregulatory giveaway to the pharmaceutical and medical device industry” – and which aims to speed up drug approvals and enforce mental health parity with physical health.
But the BigPharma to FDA to BigPharma revolving door is nothing new, and for many years the “regulator” and the regulated have maintained a cozy collegial atmosphere. As the saying goes, politics and big money make strange bedfellows.
As for Pfizer the company? In 2009 the U.S. Department of Justice under the Obama Administration fined Pfizer $2.9 billion for health care fraud. It was the largest health care fraud settlement in history for mislabeling one of its drugs with the “intent to defraud.” Did the company change its ways? In 2016 the company was fined $106 million by a British regulator from hiking the price of an epilepsy drug by 2,600 percent.
So as we enter the era of “a vaccine to end all our COVID troubles,” there is evidence aplenty of an ethically challenged company with a big money agenda leading the charge.
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