400,000 overdose deaths haven’t stopped OxyContin maker’s foreign affiliate from using same misleading claims in China that allegedly fueled the U.S. drug crisis ekinetz
Boxes of OxyContin tablets sold in China sit on a table in southern China's Hunan province on Sept. 24, 2019. Representatives from the Sacklers' Chinese affiliate, Mundipharma, tell doctors that OxyContin is less addictive than other opioids — the same pitch that their U.S. company, Purdue Pharma, admitted was false in court more than a decade ago.
These tactics mirror those employed by Purdue Pharma in the U.S., where more than 400,000 people have died of opioid overdoses and millions more became addicted. An avalanche of litigation over the company’s marketing has driven Purdue Pharma into bankruptcy in the U.S.In China, Mundipharma managers have required sales representatives to copy patients’ private medical records without consent, in apparent violation of Chinese law, current and former employees told AP.
Mundipharma said it was taking immediate action to investigate the allegations uncovered by AP. In a statement, the company did not respond to specific allegations but said it has rigorous policies in place “to ensure that our medicines are marketed responsibly and in accordance with China’s strict regulatory framework governing analgesics.”
These seeds of philanthropy and political alliances would bear fruit for the Sacklers just as opioid prescriptions began to fall in the U.S. Two decades ago, as stories of OxyContin abuse began to circulate in the United States, foreign pharmaceutical companies helped spread a new gospel of pain treatment across China, recasting pain as the fifth vital sign—alongside blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature—and pain treatment as a human right.
“In China, doctor’s groups, especially the young doctors, show their respect to American doctors or the European doctors,” Yu said. “What they say, that’s truth. What you say, that’s interfering.”In 2007, Purdue and three executives pleaded guilty in U.S. court to misrepresenting OxyContin as less addictive than other opioid painkillers, and paid $635 million in penalties, one of the largest settlements in pharmaceutical company history.
Two years later, the Chinese government launched the campaign nationwide. On February 22, 2011, Mundipharma won a contract to implement the program with an initial target of establishing model GPM wards in 150 key hospitals within three years.Mundipharma was responsible for helping train doctors and educate patients, as well as distributing pamphlets and placards to raise awareness about pain.
The oncology society declined to answer questions. China’s Ministry of Health, which was reorganized as the National Health Commission, said it hadn’t designated a company to provide assistance for the program. During that same period, sales of morphine, widely considered an affordable “gold standard” for pain treatment, remained flat at those same hospitals. By early 2017, OxyContin had captured roughly 60 percent of the cancer pain market in China, up from just over 40 percent in 2014, company documents show.
Chen knew he had no legal right to copy personal information, and at first scribbled over patients’ names before uploading the documents. He and his colleagues said they used to discreetly snap photos of patient records during the night shift, or during lunch breaks. The key to this access was good relationships with doctors. Just as Purdue was accused of doing in the U.S., Mundipharma cultivated doctors with paid speaking gigs, dinners, event sponsorships and expense-paid trips to meetings, sometimes routing payments through third parties, sales reps said. Speakers, who sometimes delivered presentations created by or with Mundipharma sales staff, could earn 500 yuan to several thousand yuan per speech, current and former employees said.
But as pain treatment expanded in China, with the establishment of pain clinics beginning in 2007 and the rollout of GPM, more doctors became certified to prescribe opioids. Pain management ceased to be the purview of anesthesiologists like Ruijin Hospital’s Dr. Yu. It became a matter for surgeons, pain clinicians and cancer doctors.
Yu said he tried to persuade colleagues that some of the new notions about pain were silly, even risky. “I remember I argued with them, muscle pain or joint pain is not a good indication for opioid drugs,” he said. “But they said, it’s a human right. You have to relieve the pain.”When Chen started work at Mundipharma, he was taught that OxyContin was a good drug, and widely used in America.
Yet, three current and former employees of Purdue’s international affiliate in China made the same claim to AP that OxyContin reduces the risk of addiction because it is released slowly into the bloodstream, causing fewer “peaks and troughs” than immediate-release drugs. This argument has no scientific basis, according to a 2016 U.S. Centers for Disease Control report.
Other Mundipharma materials echoed a brief 1980 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine that has been repeatedly and incorrectly cited to suggest that opioids aren’t as addictive as everyone had long thought. Even after the journal “for reasons of public health” took the unusual step of publishing a cautionary editor’s note above the letter, it continued to be used in China.
OxyContin’s FDA-approved label warns that even if taken as prescribed, OxyContin carries potentially lethal risks of addiction and abuse. Purdue now faces multiple U.S. lawsuits for spreading ideas about pseudoaddiction, as well as claiming the risk of opioid addiction is low and that doses can be increased without risk.
The co-author on a 2006 study of visceral pain went on to serve as a paid consultant for Mundipharma. One of the authors on another study, from 2003, cited as evidence that OxyContin is “ideal” for neuropathic pain, was a Mundipharma Canada employee. Mundipharma sourced OxyContin’s effectiveness for osteoarthritis pain to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, a professional society that attorneys general allege, in multiple lawsuits, is a paid front group for corporate interests.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
AP: Oxy sales in China driven by misleading addiction claimsAPExclusive: OxyContin maker paid $600 million in legal penalties for misrepresenting addiction risks in the U.S. Its foreign affiliate is making the same claims to sell the drug in China. By ekinetz.
Read more »
Fake doctors, misleading claims drive OxyContin China salesAPExclusive: OxyContin’s a dying business in the United States. But documents and interviews show Purdue Pharma’s China affiliate pushing opioids with the same misleading tactics it abandoned in the U.S. By ekinetz.
Read more »
The GOP’s “Real Deal” Defense Is FakeThe aid suspension was an inadvertent test not of the Ukrainian president’s sincerity, but of Trump’s.
Read more »
Donald Trump accused of spreading fake Nancy Pelosi quote in attack calling house speaker 'crazy'Trump appeared to paraphrase a comment by the house speaker in a letter she wrote to fellow Democrats which said that the president is 'jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.'
Read more »
New Hong Kong police chief says fake news undermining reputation of his forceNew Hong Kong police chief Chris Tang took office on Tuesday with a warning that...
Read more »
A New Jersey Mom Was Accused Of Shoplifting Yogurt With A Fake Baby'I thought it was a straight-up joke.'
Read more »