Graham Dukes, John Braithwaite, and J.P. Moloney: Pharmaceuticals, Corporate Crime and Public Health
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00709.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
Book Reviews
PHARMACEUTICALS, CORPORATE CRIME AND PUBLIC HEALTH by
GRAHAM DUKES, JOHN BRAITHWAITE, AND J.P. MOLONEY
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014, 408 pp., £95.00)
Thirty years ago, John Braithwaite published a shocking account of the
prevalence and extent of corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry.
1
The evidence amassed in this readable new book, which Braithwaite has co-
authored with Graham Dukes and J.P. Moloney, paints an equally alarming
picture. It is hard to keep up with the range and variety of wrongdoing: over-
pricing medicines; misusing patents; breaching competition law; dumping
substandard drugs; hiding safety data; encouraging `off-label' prescribing;
bribing doctors to prescribe branded medicines an d bribing generics
manufacturers to refrain from producing cheap equivalents. In addition to
its extraordinary variety, the harms can be grave. Wrongdoing by drugs'
manufacturers does not just increase their profit margins. It can kill people,
both by putting medicines out of reach of the patients who could benefit
from them, and by selling unsafe medicines.
In the thirty years since Braithwaite's original book was published, it is
clear that not only has the picture not improved, it has got worse. In 1984,
Braithwaite had concluded that `19 of the 20 largest US pharmaceutical
companies had paid commercially significant bribes'. Given this statistic, it
is shocking to learn that the industry today is, in fact, `less ethical, less
innovative and less law-abiding than was the case a generation ago' (p. 272).
Fraud in the safety testing of pharmaceuticals has, if anything, become `more
extensive and more brazen in recent decades' (p. 272).
But the purpose of this book is not just to add to the growing literature on
endemic misconduct in the pharmaceutical industry. Its focus is, instead, on
crime and punishment, and, in particular, on the usefulness or otherwise of
different strategies that might be used not only to stop companies behaving
badly, but also to persuade them instead to behave well. In offering an
evidence-based account of what works, and just as importantly, what does
not work, it makes a substantial and constructive contribution to the debate
about how to tackle unethical and illegal conduct by these supranational
corporations.
At first sight, the criminal law might look like a promising tool with
which to deter bad behaviour since it can employ real and alarming
308
1 J. Braithwaite, Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry (1984).
ß2015 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2015 Cardiff University Law School
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