REVIEWS: COMBATING THE OTHER DRUG PROBLEM

Date01 May 1985
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1985.tb00846.x
Published date01 May 1985
REVIEWS
COMBATING
THE
OTHER DRUG PROBLEM
CORPORATE
CRIME
IN
THE
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY. By
J.
ROCHE
VERSUS
ADAMS. By
S.
ADAMS.
[Jonathan Cape. 1984. 236
TACKLING
the multinationals, particularly in fields such as pharmaceuticals,
is a formidable proposition, and these two books present a wealth
of
data
on just how complex and difficult a task that is. Both of them provide
insight into the interplay between law and social power in an industry that
is of profound importance to social well-being. Indeed, there can be few
areas of commerce that are
as
emotive as the production of “ethicals,” as
may be judged from the results of public seriousness surveys’ and from the
sensitivity
of
industry spokespersons. In recent years, there have been a
series of public scandals regarding the activities
of
the pharmaceutical
companies, ranging from their active promotion of non-prescription
“medicines” such as cough mixtures that have no significant active
ingredients to their sale of drugs that are actually harmful. In April
1984,
it was revealed that out-of-court settlements in Britain had been made by
E.
R.
Squibb in connection with the anti-diarrhoea drug halquinol on
condition that the compensated parties did not reveal the details or even
the fact that settlements had been made. As
I
write, Eli Lilly have
responded with understandable reluctance to pressure to compensate
alleged Opren victims in Britain
as
well as in America, although it still
maintains that it did not behave improperly and that payment
to
Americans
was due principally to the fact that the costs
of
the other party are not
recoverable in American civil actions. A member of the Government’s
Committee on the Safety of Medicines received headlines in August
1984
for his warning to doctors that they were in grave danger
of
losing public
confidence because of their enthusiastic receipt of lavish gifts and hospitality
from the drug companies. In June, a resolution demanding action against
unethical marketing practicecsuch as selling anabolic steroids to improve
the appetites of malnourished children in the Third World without warnings
of
side effectcwas passed by the World Health Assembly in Geneva,
only the United States voting against.
Adams’s book is more than the sad tale of how a conscientious decision
by a fairly senior executive to inform the EEC Commissioner in charge of
competition practices of Hoffmann-La Roche’s pike-fixing activities led,
via a leak that might be described generously as incompetent, to
his
arrest
and incommunicado remand in custody, to the suicide of his wife, and to
the betrayal of previously rendered promises in connection with his
business, which then collapsed. It contains a wealth of information about
the marketing and transfer pricing of drugs, and of the setting up of
dummy corporations in low tax countries to facilitate these ends. It
discusses, in the style of a man (understandably) possessed, the unsavoury
F.
Cullen,
B.
Link and C. Polanzi, “The seriousness
of
crime revisited,” Criminology,
20,
1982,
pp.8S102; L. Schrager and
J.
Short,
“How
serious a crime? Perceptions
of
organisational and common crimes,” in
G.
Geis and
E.
Stotland (eds.), White-Collar
Crime: Theory
and
Research
(1980).
BRAITHWAITE. [Routledge
&
Kegan Paul. 1984. 440 pp.
f25.1
pp.
€8.95.1
359

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