Big Pharma Gets its Hooks into Seton Hall Law School
For decades, the pharmaceutical industry has marinated the medical profession in millions of dollars of free samples, lunches, trips, and fees.The goal – influence, power, profits.
Now, the industry has another target – the legal profession.
Last week, industry leaders Schering-Plough Corporation, sanofi-aventis, Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb and the pharma law firm Gibbons PC – announced that they will donate a total of $9.1 million to establish the Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, New Jersey.
“This is what they have been doing with doctors for the last five decades – shaping young doctors’ minds,” said Peter Rost, a former vice president at Pfizer and author of The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Soft Skull Press, 2006). “Now they want to shape the minds of young lawyers.”
“I would imagine that the drug industry feels that the legal environment has been challenging – with prosecutions and False Claims Act cases proliferating,” Rost said. “I’m sure they hope that they can have an impact on things. They are not doing this to be nice. They are doing it because it is in their interest. They are making friends, trying to start being proactive about what happens – get involved from the beginning.”
A spokesperson for Seton Hall Law School, Kathleen Eagan, said she could not provide anyone for an interview about the project – although last week, the Law School did distribute a press release and held a press conference about the donations.
Bristol Myers Squibb’s contribution – $5 million – grew out of a June 2005 deferred prosecution agreement cut with the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey – Christopher Christie – a Seton Hall Law School graduate.
Christie has been harshly criticized for directing the funds to his alma mater.
But he says that the idea came from the lawyer representing Bristol Myers Squibb and that his office only required that a business ethics chair be endowed at a New Jersey law school.
Lo and behold, Rutgers University School of Law already had a business ethics chair – endowed by Prudential.
Christie says that Bristol Myers was required to endow the chair in an effort to “change the corporate culture.”
How?
“The professor occupying that endowed chair is required to conduct an annual ethics seminar for Bristol-Myers management and other interested industry members,” Christie said last year.
© 2007 Corporate Crime Reporter.com
My degrees are in psychology and I always feel a little snowed by folks who know more about political reality than I do. But, while I have on occasion been a little naive in that realm, I am always struck by how credulous leftists can be with certain establishments. The pharmaceutical corporations are as big a threat in their ways as are the energy corporations. They are literally tinkering with the brains of children, always looking to expand their market, playing on fear via TV ads, or playing on charitable motivations, including those of the left, trying to “help” people get their snake oil. (except snake oil is less potent). Message to the political left: the health, mental health and education establishments are historically and today tools of social control. Question EVERYTHING they do.
So who is more despicable, the prostitute (Seton Hall Law School) or her patron (Big Pharma)?
Wouldn’t you like to be a speck on the wall during the ethics seminar for management which they have endowed?
The metaphor for that one is: Flies (corporate management) flocking to a manure pile (the endowed Seton Hall faculty member(s). This is the best “lawyer joke” I have heard in a long time.
Bill Moyers suggests public financing for ALL elections. What a wonderful idea. It would remove the power of corporations to *gain access* (as they put it, to those they have made campaign contributions to. It would remove the temptation members of Congress now face to give more consideration to those *needs* corporations say they have than to the human needs faced by ordinary voters. Public financing should be the law, as should strong prohibitions against any *help* from corporations in writing legislation. No more energy acts written by the energy companies or insurance and drug benefits legislation written by and for the insurance and drug industries. No need for politicians to be wealthy OR to suck up to corporate donors; anyone could run for office.
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if there were a dozen or so Pharms in actual competition with each other and the ground rules were such that generic producers were protected, but what we have is a few megacorporations that have bought up about everything in sight and are able to collude together for their benefit. Furthermore they have acquired the legal expertise to protect their patents long after they have expired so that they can continue to gouge the consumers. They go with what will make the most profit for the least investment, and that is not developing new and better drugs. It is protecting patents, price gouging, advertising, and buying influence. Are you listening Lieberman, AARP, …?
imagine the full schizophrenia of the “just say no” to drugs message that young minds find themselves exposed to. Every 4th TV commercial advertises SOME drug, in my view, they are not designing CONDITIONS to treat. A friend of mine pointed out that medicine is not orienting towards cures, and there is some attempt to curb access to holistic health and herbs… it wants to have people on PERMANENT maintenance plans. Think Diabetes. Think how much sugar is added to food, or “happy meals,” etc. Because big pharma is an “industry” with such bloated profits, they have plenty of $ for advertising. It’s my understanding they cherry pick some of the best minds to graduate with degrees in psychology and then figure out the colors, buzz words, etc to pretty much ROPE people towards their products. Lately I’ve felt the TV drug ads remind me of the illegal drug days, i.e. who’s the pusher? I won’t say the name, but one drug was rendered like a Salvadore Dali painting, every image out of perspective… and a couple comes dancing out of a clock as the voice over says, “It’s time for…” (drug name). Or how about flying off in a hot air balloon with a pretty blonde like Joan Lundin? Next are the names of the drugs… Elantra, Allegra, Viagra… if a UFO landed and sent in a translator, there’s a pretty good chance they’d mistake these names for Greek states simulating satori! Again… who’s the pusher man…
correction: they are NOW designing conditions to treat, lo siento!
Corporations are as corrupt as we the people let them become.
“But he says that the idea came from the lawyer representing Bristol Myers Squibb and that his office only required that a business ethics chair be endowed at a New Jersey law school.”
Business Ethics 101: Thou shalt ignore the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights and not obstruct the injustices perpetrated upon the people by ANY corporation.
Bernice,
Re: Bill Moyers suggests public financing for ALL elections. What a wonderful idea. It would remove the power of corporations to *gain access*
… which is why it will never happen.
And to extend Moyer’s argument, if there was sufficient money for public education, schools wouldn’t have to prostitute themselves to corporate sponship.
Our leaders take every opportunity to cripple education in this country - righties criticize lefties as elite snobs because they are educated. Everywhere totalitarianism takes root it condemns and even kills the educated. Our Republican leadership certainly fears an intelligent and learned electorate.
I remember McDonald’s commercials where they had Ronald dance around for ninety seconds, never once mentioning food - it was an ad for Ronald McDonald, the clown corporate shill. The same thing happens now with the big drug companies and their drug-pushing. Entire commercials extolling “little purple pills” of Peggy Fleming skating around (a la Ronald McDonald) singing about some narcotic I can’t remember without telling you what the drugs were for! (Seems some pesky “truth in advertising” law requires them to list the side effects if they mention the supposed cure.) Ask your doctor! You may have the very disease our really expensive drug is for! Never mind what it is, you may have it already!