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Here is the link to the CBS article:1eye wrote:Here's one I didn't write:
Cheerleader targeted
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 10:22am
This is cut and pasted so you won't have to click to another page. I did not write it.
A non-profit organization supporting research into multiple sclerosis that was linked in a lawsuit to an alleged “money laundering thing” at Serono Labs sent a cease-and-desist memo to an M.S. activist, demanding she take down information about the case from her Facebook page. The activist, TV and movie soundtrack singer Joan Beal, told BNET she complied because, “I don’t have the stomach for it.”
It’s another example of the way managers are turning to attorneys when debates in the healthcare business get rough. Bayer (BAYRY) recently lost a legal case in Switzerland in which it tried to stop TV reports about deaths associated with its Yaz contraceptive. And GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) once employed a top R&D exec to contact scientists engaged in independent research on its troubled diabetes drug, Avandia, to tell them it was “not [in] anyone’s best interest.”
In the Serono case, the company paid $44.3 million to settle allegations with the Department of Justice that it “funneled” kickbacks to doctors through the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Clinics, a non-profit group. The alleged kickbacks rewarded them for prescribing Rebif, Serono’s M.S. drug, and CMSC took a cut of the money it passed on, the suit claimed.
The CMSC was not named as a defendant in the suit. Its lawyer, John Edwards, denies the charity did anything wrong. His email to Beal stated in part:
Your Facebook page contains libelous statements concerning the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers. It also contains a link to “freepdfhosting.com%2F543bcc781b.pdf&h=f2fcd,” which itself contains a United States District Court complaint THAT WAS FILED UNDER SEAL.
That complaint includes libelous and false statements. The party who allegedly made the statements has denied them.
This firm has been retained by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers to defend its rights and to seek damages.
Demand is hereby made that you immediately remove the libelous materials from your page, and cause the pdf complaint to be removed from all places in which you have posted it.
(The full text of the email is reproduced after the “related stories” list, below.)
No liability admitted
The complaint was unsealed after the settlement, in which Serono denied the allegations and did not admit liability.
Beal expressed concern to BNET over a potential for a conflict of interest between CMSC and Serono. CMSC runs the North American Research Committee on M.S., which collects and studies data about the disease. It is funded by Serono, among other donors.
Beal’s group, CCSVI, takes the view that the cause of M.S. isn’t a degenerative brain disorder but obstructed jugular veins slowing bloodflow from the brain. Venous obstructions can be treated with angioplasty and stents. Beal’s husband, Jeff, has M.S. which she believes is in remission due to venous stents.
Edwards, the CMSC lawyer, said that the allegation in the case that a Serono executive said “we have a whole money-laundering thing going on” with CMSC was false: “There’s no way in the world [CMSC] was involved in any way in money laundering.”
*No relation
Related:
* How M.S. Drugs Are Promoted: “We Have a Whole Money Laundering Thing Going On”
Text of email sent to Joan Beal:
Your Facebook page contains libelous statements concerning the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers. It also contains a link to “freepdfhosting.com%2F543bcc781b.pdf&h=f2fcd,” which itself contains a United States District Court complaint THAT WAS FILED UNDER SEAL.
That complaint includes libelous and false statements. The party who allegedly made the statements has denied them.
This firm has been retained by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers to defend its rights and to seek damages.
Demand is hereby made that you immediately remove the libelous materials from your page, and cause the pdf complaint to be removed from all places in which you have posted it. You are further directed to inform the undersigned when this has been accomplished. However, if you are represented by counsel in this matter, it is your counsel who should contact us.
This demand is sent with a full reservation of all of our client’s rights and remedies, both legal and equitable. These remedies will include, but not be limited to, the economic harm you have caused to our client.
John R. Edwards, Jr., Esq.
Price, Meese, Shulman & D’Arminio, P.C.
Mack-Cali Corporate Center
50 Tice Boulevard
Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey 07677
201-391-3737 (fax 201-391-9360)
jedwards@pricemeese.com
***********************************************
**********************************************************************************************
OK you can stop reading now, the rest is all me
Note how often the words 'deny' and 'admit' appear above. You would think someone had been accused of something. If nobody is liable, that is a legal construct that doesn't say anything about whether somebody is guilty or innocent. The morality of the thing is for the public (at least) to be the judge of. Such treatment of Joan Beal will not benefit anyone, least of all doctors working for charitable organizations, or even Serono. As is universally true, lawyers will bill. My wife used to work in a place that had a picture on the wall, of a farmer and his wife pulling hard on the tail and horns of a cow, while a lawyer sat in the middle milking away.
What did they give all those millions for, if they are going to be judged anyway, by the unwashed Faceliterati?
More to the point, if I were a faceless corporation that had oodles of spare cash, and Mr. Amato had no case, I would certainly not settle and give the US and Mr. Amato each a bag of it. Good thing I'm not a CEO, isn't it?
There is the issue of accepting bribes, and there is the issue of paying them, and there is the issue of demanding them. Who did what, seems a rather important question to me, and I bet there are others who share that opinion, maybe on Facebook.
There's a link to it on Marc's most recent blog.Cece wrote:Does anyone have a copy of the pdf of the complaint? I haven't read through everything, it seemed complex, but now I am thinking I would like to.
Can't believe they'd send a lawyer after Joan Beal for posting the truth.
Multiple sclerosis drugmaker EMD Serono has a new CEO, James Hoyes, which isn’t news until you ask what happened to the old CEO. Former CEO Fereydoun Firouz resigned sometime before May 3, but the company didn’t tell anyone outside the building until it published this May 20 press release.
It was almost as if Serono was unprepared when Firouz suddenly “independently decided to pursue other professional opportunities,” as the statement put it. The company didn’t quote Firouz even though he had been with the company for two decades.
In an unfortunate coincidence, Firouz’s departure came 24 hours before Serono agreed to pay a $44 million settlement in a case in which it had been accused of using an M.S. charity as a “money laundering thing” that funneled kickbacks to doctors who prescribed a lot of its M.S. drug, Rebif. The charity then sent cease-and-desist letters to an M.S. activist who used her Facebook page to highlight the allegations. Firouz was not personally accused of any wrongdoing.
Feyrouz became CEO in 2003. Serono said:
During his tenure as President and CEO of EMD Serono, Mr. Firouz tripled the revenues and capabilities of the US organization, instilling pride, integrity and purpose amongst the employee base with a focus on advancing science and medicine, impacting the health of patients, being a leader and contributing to society in a meaningful way.
Another “meaningful way” that Firouz tripled his revenues was by illegally promoting human growth hormone to AIDS patients for unapproved “off-label” uses. In 2005, the company paid $705 million to make the case go away. That settlement excluded Serono from receiving revenue from Medicare and Medicaid, and put the company under a five-year corporate integrity agreement. The more recent “money laundering thing” extended the CIA another three years.
Perhaps Hoyes will have more luck during his tenure. He has already promised to be more transparent about Serono’s payments to doctors.