Ep. 228 - Pharma. Company Exposed in Boston: A Conversation with Palm Beach Post Reporters Pt. 2

We frame today’s podcast with Palm Beach Post reporters, John Pacenti and Pat Beall with a clip from the Insys Therapeutics rap video on the virtues of persuading doctors to prescribe higher doses of the company’s liquid opioid, Subsys. This week jurors in the Insys racketeering case in Boston heard the following lyrics from the company’s self-produced video; “I love titration. Yeah, it’s not a problem. I got new patients and I got a lot of ‘em”. That may be the most damning evidence against former executives of the company yet.

In this second part of our series, we continue our conversation on the deceptive sales practices pioneered by Purdue Pharma more than 20 years ago, and perpetuated by others in the industry. In 2007, Purdue Pharma executives pled guilty to misbranding and deceptive marketing but the charges were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors and they were sentenced to just 300 hours of community service, thanks in part to Rudy Giuliani. In January, the trial began for former executives of Insys Therapeutics for essentially the same deceptive sales practices Purdue Pharma pled guilty to 12 years earlier. Palm Beach Post reporter, John Pacenti describes a corrupt operation willing to do almost anything to induce physicians to overprescribe their product, Subsys Fentanyl spray.

We close today’s podcast with more of the self-produced Insys rap video on the virtues of persuading doctors to prescribe higher doses of Subsys. Go to Cover2.org to view the entire video featuring the company’s former director of sales, Alec Burlakoff, in a giant prescription bottle.