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Drug company found liable in landmark opioid case
Pharmaceutical company Teva is facing numerous other opioid-related lawsuits
around the US
A New York jury has found Teva Pharmaceutical Industries liable in helping to fuel opioid addiction in the state, with damages set to be determined later.
Following Thursday’s decision, which came after more than a week of deliberations, Teva released a statement saying they “strongly disagree” with the outcome of the six-month-long trial and they are preparing a “swift appeal.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James meanwhile called Thursday a “significant day” for all those negatively impacted by opioids, and said the legal action was only one part of a longer plan to continue holding “manufacturers and distributors” of opioids accountable.
The lawsuit, taken by the state and two of its counties, accused Teva of using manipulative and misleading marketing to push more opioids, fueling the addiction crisis that has hit New York, as well as numerous other parts of America.
The judge presiding over the case still has to make a ruling on a request for a mistrial, based on a statistic cited by the prosecution in their closing arguments that was false. Teva’s shares tumbled several points less than an hour after the verdict.
The New York lawsuit is a landmark case as it is at the center of a massive legal undertaking to target every part of the opioid supply chain, including manufacturers and distributors. If this verdict stands and leads to significant damages, it could pressure Teva and other companies to settle the thousands of other pending lawsuits across the country related to opioid addiction rates spiking in recent years due to what critics say is a system that over-prescribes and does not sufficiently warn patients about the highly addictive substance.
Other drug manufacturers were included in New York’s lawsuit, including AbbVie, which settled its lawsuit earlier this month for the price of $200 million. Teva was the sole defendant following AbbVie’s settlement.
More than 100,000 people died of a drug overdose between April 2020 and April of 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a November report on the ongoing crisis. Officials have said more than 500,000 deaths can be linked to the opioid crisis in the last two decades.
Twitter Suspends Media Site’s Account for Posting Video
of Congressman Criticizing Big Pharma
By Jack Phillips January 2, 2022
Media company Grabien News has been suspended by Twitter for posting a video of a U.S. congressman criticizing pharmaceutical corporations, its founder said.
Grabien founder Tom Elliott wrote on Twitter on Dec. 31 that Grabien was suspended for citing comments by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) about COVID-19 treatments.
“Big Pharma Won’t Consider Therapeutics Like HCQ or Ivermectin Because of Economic Interests,” the post reads. It had an attached link to a video containing the congressman’s comments.
Elliott included a screenshot statement from Twitter, which sent him a boilerplate message that Grabien was suspended for “violating the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19,” which Elliott described as “next-level Twitter absurdity.”
“Obviously, in this case, quoting an elected leader on an issue that matters to everyone is important and newsworthy, regardless of whether you agree,” Elliott said. “And I can’t help but add that his basic point was once mainstream among progressives.
“I’ve appealed, making this point. However, I have no confidence in Twitter doing the right thing and acknowledging this tweet did not violate its terms & conditions.”
That's because it's not really about violating its terms and conditions, it's about speaking the truth about Big Pharma. These incidents make it obvious that Big Pharma is exerting a profound degree of influence over Twitter. It also makes it obvious that Twitter is not capable of managing itself in terms of free speech and truth.
Twitter officials didn’t respond to an Epoch Times request for comment by press time.
The suspension appears to suggest Twitter is aiming to crack down on COVID-19- or vaccine-related posts and content that run contrary to mainstream views on the matter.
Dr. Robert Malone, who helped develop the mRNA vaccine technology, was suspended last week for allegedly violating Twitter’s terms and conditions. And on Jan. 2, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) personal Twitter page was suspended for similar reasons, she wrote on social media site Gettr.
“We permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement on Jan. 2. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy.”
Malone, meanwhile, told The Epoch Times that his account—which had more than 500,000 followers—was permanently suspended with no forewarning. That was days before Malone conducted an interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan.
Meanwhile, former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson has filed a lawsuit against Twitter after his account, which also had amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, was banned.
Last month, former CEO Jack Dorsey resigned from his position at Twitter, sparking concern that the San Francisco-based company would take a more hard-line stance on what content can be posted. Longtime Twitter employee Parag Agrawal, who previously made comments critical of free speech, took over as CEO upon Dorsey’s departure.
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‘Pharma Bro’ CEO ordered to pay $64 million, barred from industry
The company was accused of driving up the price of a lifesaving drug used
by pregnant women and cancer patients
in the Brooklyn borough of New York City © Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Martin Shkreli, dubbed the “Pharma Bro” by the media, has been ordered to pay $64.6 million in profits he and his company made off of the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim. He is also barred from the pharmaceutical industry for life.
Shkreli, the founder and former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, won’t be living up to his nickname for much longer. US District Judge Denise Cote delivered the decision barring him from the business on Friday, following a seven day bench trial in December.
“The powerful don’t get to make their own rules, despite Shkreli thinking cash rules everything around him,” New York Attorney General Letitia James tweeted about Shkreli in a thread celebrating the ruling. The 2020 lawsuit alleged Shkreli blocked the competition from vital data and used supply agreements to manipulate the market availability of the drug’s actual ingredients.
Shkreli’s price gouging was first discovered in 2015 and the story immediately captured the national spotlight, with former President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton even addressing it on the 2016 campaign trail, with the former dubbing Shkreli a “spoiled brat.”
Then-CEO Shkreli came under fire after his company acquired the lifesaving drug Daraprim and sent prices through the roof, raising costs in 2015 for consumers from under $20 to more than $700.
He defended the actions simply as capitalism at the time, something that did not help him in his latest case, with Judge Cote saying Shkreli “doubled down” in the face of “public opprobrium.”
Shkreli is currently serving a seven year sentence for separate securities fraud charges.
Is there any chance he will emerge from prison a more humble pharma bro? I doubt it!
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