Tag Archives: Allen Jones

J&J Paid Texas Official to Speak Around the U.S., Jury Told

Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit paid a Texas mental health official to speak around the U.S. about state guidelines on prescribing antipsychotic drugs that gave preference to medicines like the company’s Risperdal, the official said.

Steven Shon accepted honorariums to fly to Arizona, Florida and New Jersey to discuss Texas guidelines developed in 1999 advising doctors that a newer class of drugs like Risperdal were a “first choice or option” for schizophrenia, he testified today in state court in Austin. Texas is suing J&J, saying the company fraudulently promoted Risperdal and overbilled Medicaid by at least $579 million.

Texas AG suit over the drug Risperdal goes to trial Monday

A routine inquiry a decade ago by an investigator for the Pennsylvania inspector general exposed a pattern in which pharmaceutical companies showered trips, meals and other perks on state officials in positions to influence which drugs would be used to treat patients under Medicaid. The efforts appeared to have been particularly successful in Texas, which has one of the largest Medicaid populations.

In 2004, Allen Jones, a whistle-blower who worked with the Pennsylvania inspector general, filed suit alleging that pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson improperly marketed its antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses while funneling money to members of a state panel charged with recommending drug treatments for those in state health programs.

J&J drug protocols cost taxpayers millions—Lawsuit claims Investigator fired after going public on J&J’s anti-psychotic drug campaign

Allen Jones was curious.

Why did Pennsylvania use a computer program that often pointed to a Johnson & Johnson drug over other, cheaper medicine to treat certain mental illnesses, the investigator for the Keystone State’s Office of Inspector General wanted to know. While the computer program mandated doctors use a new line of anti-psychotic drugs, including Risperdal, sold by J&J’s subsidiary Janssen companies, Jones said he couldn’t find government-funded medical studies showing that these new drugs were any more effective than their generic predecessors.

Depression Screenings Not Recommended!

If you’re feeling down, don’t rush to your doctor just yet. Many instances of mild depression resolve without intervention. In fact, a new analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) concludes that routine screening for depression isn’t beneficial or efficient.

The United States and Canada recommend screening for depression by primary care providers, but the United Kingdom says no way! The UK does not recommend screening because of a lack of evidence and ineffective use of scarce health care resources.

In addition, The UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines, cite concerns about high rates of false-positive results (in some cases more than 50 percent), lack of evidence, high costs and resources, and the diversion of resources away from people with serious depression.

Drug firms paid ‘independent’ experts

Doctors working in state hospitals and community mental health centers began switching patients to the atypical antipsychotics because they were deemed the best treatment by an expert panel convened by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation.

But a detailed examination of public records documents on file in a whistleblower lawsuit that has been joined by the Texas Attorney General’s Office allege that the experts hired to evaluate the drugs and make recommendations for their usage were also accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from the companies developing and marketing the medications.

It started in the middle 1990s when MHMR contracted with University of Texas and some of its professors to evaluate the medications and develop a set of treatment guidelines.

The program was named the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP. The result was step-by-step guidelines for treating major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.