12/2/16

Pharma and Advertising

© Maksim Kabakou | 123rf.com

© Maksim Kabakou | 123rf.com

The FDA recently held public hearings on the off-label advertising of approved medications and medical devices on November 9 and 10, 2016. “FDA is engaged in a comprehensive review of its regulations and policies governing firms’ communications about unapproved uses of approved/cleared medical products, and the input from this meeting will inform FDA’s policy development in this area.” There were specific questions asked at the hearing, but the FDA was also interested in “any other pertinent information participants would like to share.” If you weren’t able to be in Maryland for the hearing, electronic or written comments will be accepted until January 9, 2017. A videotape of the hearing will be available for one year afterwards.

Your initial reaction may be one of “Boring!” That is unless you are aware of the crossroads we are approaching with regard to the off-label advertising of medications and medical devices. On March 8, 2016, the FDA made a settlement agreement with the pharmaceutical company Amarin that allows the company to promote its drug Vascepa for off-label use. What is this important breakthrough medication? Vascepa is prescription strength fish oil. This action was the outcome of a struggle between Amarin and the FDA going back several years.

Amarin wanted to widen the population for whom they could recommend Vascepa to include patients with different cardiovascular diseases—patients other than what Vascepa was initially approved to treat. But the FDA ruled against their request. Amarin’s stock price took a nosedive. Concerned with how their investors were reacting, the company fought back by suing the FDA. Then in August of 2015, a judge ruled that Amarin could market its drug to the broader population. He also ruled the company could claim that Vascepa “may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.” This was despite the fact that the FDA had called the claim misleading, as there was “supportive but not conclusive research” to that effect.

Amarin successfully argued that it had a First Amendment right to market its drug for a broader patient group, “despite the lack of regulatory approval and the lack of evidence of an outcomes benefit for patients.” Justin Karter noted how the FDA settlement strikes at the heart of the drug regulatory system in the U.S. Amarin argued that companies should have the right to market their products consistent with what “a judge would consider to be neither false or misleading.” Be clear on what Amarin was saying. A judge, not the FDA, should rule on whether or not the marketing claims by a pharmaceutical company for their product were truthful and not misleading.

Amarin argued that this system is unconstitutional, and that companies should instead be allowed to market their products in any way that a judge would consider to be neither false nor misleading.

Commenting on the FDA settlement agreement in Amrain Pharma v. U.S. Food & Drug Administration, lawyer and mental health advocate Jim Gottstein said he thought that for all practical purposes, the FDA ban against off-label promotion of drug companies was dead. He noted that the ruling in the Amarin case was based upon a 2012 decision in Unites States v. Caronia that reversed a criminal conviction for off-label promotion.

In light of the settlement I think it is fair to ask where things stand with the FDA’s enforcement of its ban against off-label promotion and Department of Justice prosecutions of drug companies for off-label promotion leading to false claims.  I think the ban against off-label promotion is dead for all practical purposes.  The FDA could try and get a different ruling in another circuit and, if successful, ask the Supreme Court to rule, but since it didn’t ask the Supreme Court to take the case in Caronia, it doesn’t seem likely that it has any intention of trying to overturn Caronia. This will give the drug companies free rein for off-label promotion.  Of course, anything that is false or misleading is still grounds for charges, but that is a far harder case to make.

So if this is the supposed future for off-label drug advertising unless there is some radical change by Congress, let’s now take a look at the past—what has been taking place under the existing FDA rules. In his book Saving Normal, Allen Frances published a chart that he called the drug company “hall of shame.” Prepared by Melissa Raven, PhD, it listed the fines and settlements by Pharma companies for off-label promotion, marketing and fraudulent misbranding of 20 well know pharmaceuticals.

Here is a sampling of the companies and their total fines and settlements between 2004 and 2012 recorded in the Saving Normal chart. The fines and settlements listed below combine both civil and criminal cases. Johnson & Johnson ($1.44 billion); GlaxoSmithKline ($3 billion); Abbott ($1.5 billion); Novartis ($422.5 million); Forrest ($313 million); AstraZeneca ($520 million); Pfizer ($2.3 billion); Eli Lily ($1.415 billion); Bristol-Myers Squibb ($515 million); Purdue (almost $635 million). I think it’s clear why Pharma is going after the FDA. The sum total in fines and settlements from the chart was $12.06 billion in fines and settlements between 2004 and 2012.

On March 31, 2016, the nonprofit organization Public Citizen published an updated analysis of all major financial settlements and court judgments between pharmaceutical companies and the federal and state governments. The time period covered by their analysis ran from 1991 through 2015 and included 373 settlements for a total of $35.7 BILLION. Financial penalties have declined sharply since 2013. The most striking decrease occurred with criminal penalties. “For 2012 and 2013 combined, criminal penalties totaled $2.7 billion, but by 2014-2015, the total had fallen to $44 million, a decrease of more than 98%.”

From 1991 through 2015, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer reached the most settlements—with 31 each— and paid the most in penalties, $7.9 billion and $3.9 billion respectively. Six additional companies, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Abbott, Eli Lilly, Teva, Schering-Plough, Novartis, and AstraZeneca paid more than $1 billion in financial penalties. Six of the above eight were listed in the top 14 pharmaceutical companies by global sales in 2014. Thirty-one companies entered repeat settlements. Pfizer (11), Merck (9), GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Bristol-Myers Squibb (8 each) finalized the most federal settlements. It seems these fines were simply the cost of doing business.

Financial penalties continued to pale in comparison to company profits, with the $35.7 billion in penalties from 1991 through 2015 amounting to only 5% of the $711 billion in net profits made by the 11 largest global drug companies during just 10 of those 25 years (2003-2012). To our knowledge, a parent company has never been excluded from participation in Medicare and Medicaid for illegal activities, which endanger the public health and deplete taxpayer-funded programs. Nor has almost any senior executive been given a jail sentence for leading companies engaged in these illegal activities. Much larger penalties and successful prosecutions of company executives that oversee systemic fraud, including jail sentences if appropriate, are necessary to deter future unlawful behavior. Otherwise, these illegal but profitable activities will continue to be part of companies’ business model.

Since the U.S. approved direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs in 1997, there has been a dramatic increase in spending on pharmaceuticals. A New England Journal of Medicine study by Donohue, Cevasco and Rosenthal in 2007 found that spending on pharmaceutical promotions increased from $11.4 billion in 1996 to $29.9 billion in 2005. This was a 330% increase. Promotion to physicians was still the primary marketing strategy, but spending on direct-to-consumer advertising increased both in absolute terms and as a percentage of pharmaceutical sales.

Becker and Midoun recently published an article that investigated the effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) on patient prescription requests in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Of the 989 articles they initially identified, they read full-text reviews of 69 articles, but only found four that met their inclusion criteria for investigating the consequences of these ads on prescription rates and treatment quality. They conclusion was: “Findings suggest that DTCA requests are typically accommodated, promote higher prescribing volume, and have competing effects on treatment quality.” They called for methodlogically stronger studies to increase the confidence in their conclusions.

Reporting for Mad in America on the study, Justin Karter noted where the U.S. is only one of three countries globally that allows DTCA. He said the pharmaceutical industry spent $3.83 billion on DTCA in 2013 and $4.53 billion in 2014. He also noted that the American Medical Association (here) and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) (here) have called for a ban on DTCA. The AMA Board Chair, Patrice Harris, commented that physicians were concerned with the negative impact of DTCA and the role marketing costs play in fueling escalating drug prices. “Direct-to-consumer advertising also inflates demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate.” The ASHP approved a new policy at their 2016 meeting that would advocated for Congress to ban DTCA for prescription drugs and medication-containing devices.

Pharmaceutical companies have whittled away at existing FDA regulations that restrict direct-to-consumer advertising. And they seem to be poised to begin an era of DTCA that will massively overshadow what has already taken place under the existing rules. Healthcare organizations representing physicians and pharmacists in the U.S. have publically voiced their opposition to DTCA. Individuals and organizations have an opportunity to voice their concern for this practice, which is implicated in the rising cost of healthcare and medications. Congress also has an opportunity to enact new legislation that would eliminate this predatory marketing practice. But it will have to overcome the horde of lobbyists—more than there are members of Congress—and the $272,000 in campaign donations Pharma spent per member of Congress in 2015.

05/10/16

Opening the Off-Label Floodgates

© Christa Eder | 123rf.con

© Christa Eder | 123rf.con

On March 8, 2016 the FDA made a settlement agreement with the pharmaceutical company Amarin that allows Amarin to promote its drug Vascepa for off-label use to treat patients with hypertriglycerdemia, persistently high triglycerides. That is, as long as its promotion is truthful and not misleading. Amarin wanted to widen the population for whom they could recommend Vascepa to include other patients with different cardiovascular diseases, but the FDA initially ruled against this. Amarin’s stock price took a nosedive. Concerned with how their investors were reacting, the company fought back by suing the FDA. So what was this breakthrough medication worth taking on the FDA? Fish oil; Vascepa is prescription strength fish oil.

Amarin argued that it had a First Amendment right to market its drug for a broader patient group, “despite the lack of regulatory approval and the lack of evidence of an outcomes benefit for patients.” Justin Karter of Mad in America noted how the FDA settlement strikes at the heart of the drug regulatory system in the U.S. Amarin argued that companies should have the right to market their products consistent with what “a judge would consider to be neither false or misleading.” Be clear on what Amarin was saying. A judge, not the FDA, should rule on whether or not the marketing claims for their product were truthful and not misleading.

Where does a judge get the expertise to discern whether or not a company has made misleading, untruthful medical claims about their product? Pharmaceutical companies have paid millions of dollars for violating off-label promotion of their medications. One example is the blockbuster drug Neurontin, which has cost its parent drug companies millions of dollars in fines for “illegal and fraudulent promotion of unapproved uses.” An internal company email referred to Neurontin as “the ‘snake oil’ of the twentieth century.” This is but one example of the violations from multiple drug companies under the more restrictive FDA guidelines forbidding all off-label marketing.

In August of 2015, a judge in the district court of Manhattan ruled that Amarin could market its drug to the desired broader population. He also ruled the company could claim that Vascepa “may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.” This was despite the fact that the FDA had called the claim misleading, as there was “supportive but not conclusive research” to that effect. The Amarin ruling, according to attorney Amy Kapczynski, “has the potential to unleash a flood of misleading marketing to physcians.” She believes that at some point, the FDA will have to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

Writing for FDA Law Blog, David Gibbons gave a detailed description of the legal aspects of the case. While Amarin was attempting to gain FDA approval for its off-label promotion of Vespacia, data from several high-profile cardiovascular outcomes trials cast doubt on the clinical benefit of triglyceride lowering. After reviewing the data, the FDA then asked an Advisory Committee to express its opinion on whether or not “Vascepa’s triglyceride lowering effect was sufficient to approve the drug for use in patients with persistently high triglycerides. The Advisory Committee voted 9 to 2 against approval for that indication.” So Amarin sued the FDA.

In a bold move, Amarin filed a civil complaint against FDA claiming that FDA’s threat of prosecution for misbranding Vascepa had a chilling effect on Amarin’s commercial speech that was otherwise protected by the First Amendment.  For that reason, Amarin sought declaratory and injunctive relief that would prevent FDA from prosecuting the Company for truthful, non-misleading speech concerning Vascepa, going so far as to detail, in its complaint, certain off-label promotional content regarding Vascepa that the Company proposed to disseminate.  Early in the litigation proceedings, Amarin filed a motion for preliminary injunction and the court heard oral arguments on the motion on July 7, 2015, and, on August 7, the court handed down a 71-page opinion in which it granted Amarin’s requests.

Commenting on the FDA settlement agreement in Amrain Pharma v. U.S. Food & Drug Administration for Mad in America, lawyer and mental health advocate Jim Gottstein said he thought that for all practical purposes, the FDA ban against off-label promotion of drug companies was dead. He noted that the ruling in the Amarin case was based upon a 2012 decision in Unites States v. Caronia that reversed a criminal conviction for off-label promotion.

In light of the settlement I think it is fair to ask where things stand with the FDA’s enforcement of its ban against off-label promotion and Department of Justice prosecutions of drug companies for off-label promotion leading to false claims.  I think the ban against off-label promotion is dead for all practical purposes.  The FDA could try and get a different ruling in another circuit and, if successful, ask the Supreme Court to rule, but since it didn’t ask the Supreme Court to take the case in Caronia, it doesn’t seem likely that it has any intention of trying to overturn Caronia.  This will give the drug companies free rein for off-label promotion.  Of course, anything that is false or misleading is still grounds for charges, but that is a far harder case to make.

Eric Palmer, writing for FiercePharma, noted that the free speech argument has been closely monitored by the pharmaceutical industry to see just how much leeway they might expect from the FDA in their ability to market for off-label use of their products. Another pharmaceutical company, Pacira, filed suit against the FDA after the August 2015 ruling in favor of Amarin.

Tracy Staton noted on FiercePharma that the FDA agreed to remove its limits on Pacira’s marketing of Exparel, which is now approved for pain treatment at any surgical site. She said that by making a deal with Pacira, the FDA avoided another court ruling on the free-speech issue, as it seeks to adjust its marketing rules. In an attempt to limit any broader application of the Amarin ruling, the FDA has said its Vascepa promotions would not have broken FDA rules in any case. As it did with Amarin, the FDA said regarding its agreement with Pacira: “It’s important to note that this resolution is specific to the parties involved in this matter.”

Parallel to these attempts to weaken the FDA regulations against off-label marketing, there was a January 2016 article published in JAMA Internal Medicine by Eguale et al. that looked at the association between off-label drug use and the risk of adverse drug events (ADEs).  Commenting on Medscape, Eguale said to his knowledge, theirs was the first systematic evaluation of the association between off-label use of drugs and the risk for ADEs. They concluded that off-label use of prescription drugs was associated with ADEs. “Caution should be exercised in prescribing drugs for off-label uses that lack strong scientific evidence.”

The study found that the majority of prescriptions (88.2%) were for approved uses. Another 9.5% involved off-label use without strong supportive evidence; and 2.3% were off-label, but had strong evidence supporting its use off-label. The ADE rate was higher for off-label use than for on-label use, “at 19.7 per 10,000 person-months vs 12.5 per 10,000 person-months.” When analysis was done according to the strength of supporting evidence for off-label use, there was an even higher rate (at 21.7 per 10,000 person-months) for use unsupported by strong scientific evidence. “Off-label use indicated by solid scientific evidence had a rate of 13.2 per 10,000 person-months, which was virtually the same as its on-label counterpart.”

The risk for adverse events also rose with the number of prescription drugs used by individual patients. Individuals taking eight or more medications had “a more than fivefold increased risk for ADEs compared to patients who used one or two drugs.”

[P]hysicians and physician organizations should recognize the enormity of the problem and be active participants in the promotion of cautious prescribing of drugs for off-label uses lacking strong scientific evidence.

Within an invited commentary of the study, “Off-Label Drug Use and Adverse Events,” Chester Good and Walid Gellad warned that the FDA and the courts needed to carefully consider the study’s findings as they contemplate any further relaxation of regulations to permit the promotion of drugs beyond their labeled indications. “In light of these concerns, the study of off-label drug use and adverse drug events by Eguale and colleagues … is particularly timely.”

Too bad the Eguale et al. study wasn’t published earlier. Maybe it would have had some influence on the FDA settlement with Amarin. The response of pharmaceutical companies with psychiatric medications to the Amarin settlement is a serious concern. They have already demonstrated a history of flaunting the more restrictive FDA regulations to the tune of billions of dollars in fines.

On March 31, 2016, the nonprofit organization Public Citizen published an updated analysis of all major financial settlements and court judgments between pharmaceutical companies and the federal and state governments. The time period covered by their analysis ran from 1991 through 2015 and included 373 settlements for a total of $35.7 BILLION. Financial penalties have declined sharply since 2013. The most striking decrease occurred with criminal penalties. “For 2012 and 2013 combined, criminal penalties totaled $2.7 billion, but by 2014-2015, the total had fallen to $44 million, a decrease of more than 98%.”

From 1991 through 2015, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer reached the most settlements—with 31 each— and paid the most in penalties, $7.9 billion and $3.9 billion respectively. Six additional companies, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Abbott, Eli Lilly, Teva, Schering-Plough, Novartis, and AstraZeneca paid more than $1 billion in financial penalties. Six of the above eight were listed in the top 14 pharmaceutical companies by global sales in 2014. Thirty-one companies entered repeat settlements. Pfizer (11), Merck (9), GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Bristol-Myers Squibb (8 each) finalized the most federal settlements.

Financial penalties continued to pale in comparison to company profits, with the $35.7 billion in penalties from 1991 through 2015 amounting to only 5% of the $711 billion in net profits made by the 11 largest global drug companies during just 10 of those 25 years (2003-2012). To our knowledge, a parent company has never been excluded from participation in Medicare and Medicaid for illegal activities, which endanger the public health and deplete taxpayer-funded programs. Nor has almost any senior executive been given a jail sentence for leading companies engaged in these illegal activities. Much larger penalties and successful prosecutions of company executives that oversee systemic fraud, including jail sentences if appropriate, are necessary to deter future unlawful behavior. Otherwise, these illegal but profitable activities will continue to be part of companies’ business model.

It seems to this point, risking the fines has just been a potential cost of doing business with medications. With the FDA failing to challenge the decision in Caronia and its recent settlement with Amarin, the floodgates for off-label marketing of medications may have been opened. I hope that Jim Gottstein’s prediction that FDA opposition to off-label marketing is “dead” turns out to be wrong. If he is correct, and the FDA does not actively oppose future off-label marketing of psychiatric medications, we will be flooded with adverse events from their off-label use.

07/29/15

Pharma Goes to Court

© Satori | 123RF.com

© Satori | 123RF.com

Okay, stay with me on this one. I want to talk about some jousting going on in the court system between Pharma and regulatory agencies, like the FDA. Amarin Corporation is suing the FDA, saying that the FDA violated its first amendment rights to free speech. The company argued that it has “a constitutional right to share certain information about its products with doctors.” Lawyers for the company believed this was the first time a manufacturer has sued the agency before the FDA ruled against them. The future “blockbuster” at the center of this fight is an omega-3 fatty acid product derived from fish called Vascepa. That’s right prescription strength fish oil.

As a matter of fact, according to Katie Thomas of The New York Times, Vascepa is the only existing product for Amarin. The FDA approved Vascepa for patients with extremely high levels of triglycerides, which are linked to heart disease. When the company sought to expand the drug’s approved reach to individuals with severe levels of triglycerides, the FDA denied its request. Lawyers for the company claim the company is not trying to market Vascepa to a wider population of patients than it was approved for, which is illegal. Amarin merely wants to make statements about its product that manufacturers of fish-oil supplements make—namely that there is “supportive but not conclusive research” that shows fish oil products like Vascepa may reduce the risk of coronary hear disease.

A lawyer for Amarin pointed out where doctors are already prescribing Vascepa off-label, which is legal for doctors to do once the FDA approves a drug for any purpose. “Those doctors who are already prescribing off-label need more information, not less, about what their treatment options are.” John Sullivan said on Drug and Device Law, that the content of Amarin’s supporting brief was convincing. In addition to the “truthful, non-misleading statements it wants to provide to healthcare workers, it wants to provide the results of its ANCHOR clinical trial and other peer-reviewed articles on the connection between the active ingredient in Vascepa and coronary risk.

But is all this legal dancing around just about the right of a relatively small biopharmaceutical company to make the same claims about its prescription drug that dietary supplement companies can make about their fish oil products?

Toni Clarke, writing for Reuters, noted where drug companies have been increasing their efforts to pressure the FDA to relax its guidelines since a 2012 decision  (2-1) from the Second Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of a sales representative for Orphan Medical, who was caught talking to physicians about off-label uses for the narcolepsy drug, Xyrem. The court said truthful and non-misleading off-label “speech” was protected by the First Amendment. “Pharmaceutical companies are citing the Caronia and similar rulings to pressure the FDA to let them talk more freely about off-label use.”

A coalition of pharmaceutical companies known as the Medical Information Working Group has petitioned the FDA to “’adequately justify and appropriately tailor its regulatory regime in light of Caronia and similar rulings.” This coalition includes Pfizer, Sanofi, Novartis AG, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lily and Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Purdue Pharma, and Bayer Healthcare Pharaceuticals. What’s at stake is the right of manufacturers to attempt to persuade physicians to use their products for unapproved uses. This would be a potentially serious weakening of the FDA’s regulatory authority. Oh, and it could mean billions of dollars in potential sales for Pharma.

The FDA sent a letter to Amarin, essentially saying that it did not have concerns with most of the information Amarin proposed to communicate to doctors. The FDA pointed to existing guidance documents that indicated Amarin could distribute the results of its ANCHOR clinical trial results through peer-reviewed articles. Further, it said Amarin could communicate summaries of those trail results, but not in marketing materials or through sales reps.

Then on June 23, 2015, the FDA filed its brief in response to Amarin’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction. The brief called the lawsuit a frontal assault on the framework for new drug approval, rather than a narrower as-applied constitutional challenge. Lisa Baird, writing for ReedSmith, further noted where the FDA felt that if successful, the Amarin litigation “has the potential to establish precedent that would return the country to the pre-1962 era when companies were not required to prove that their drugs were safe and effective for each of their intended uses.”

At the heart of the matter is the distinction made by the FDA between drugs and dietary supplements. The FDA brief noted that Amarin ignored “the critical reality that drugs present markedly different considerations from dietary supplements.” After citing several legal rulings in support of this claim, the FDA said that Amarin wanted to market Vascepa as a drug intended to treat patients who are already being treated with statins, but continue to be at risk for cardiovascular disease. “Yet, FDA has found on multiple occasions that the heart disease claim did not meet the statutory standard of significant scientific agreement as the claim is based on ‘less persuasive studies.’” The potential harm posed by drugs is presumably much greater than that posed by dietary supplements.

These considerations amply justify a more cautious approach to drug approval and promotion, and the applicable statutory scheme recognizes this necessity. Unlike drugs, there is no statutory requirement of premarket approval for dietary supplements to be distributed. See 21 U.S.C. § 301 et seq. In addition, as a result of Pearson, claims about dietary supplements are held to a much lower standard (credible evidence) than the robust evidentiary requirement for drugs (substantial evidence) or the intermediate standard that FDA applies to reprints. See 21 U.S.C. § 355(d) & (e); Woodcock Decl. ¶¶ 31-32. Unlike for drug claims, qualified health claims “can be made [for dietary supplements and foods] under some circumstances even when the weight of the scientific evidence is against the claim, provided there is some credible evidence supporting it.” Woodcock D ecl. ¶ 33. Indeed, the June 5 Letter advised Amarin that if it “were to repackage and re-label [its] product as a dietary supplement” and ensure that other relevant conditions were met, “FDA would not object to your inclusion on that dietary supplement of the” heart disease claim. June 5 Letter at 10. Plaintiffs thus conflate two separate regulatory regimes and seek to make Amarin subject only to the aspects of each regime that it finds convenient—an approach that is unsupported by law and contrary to logic and sound public health policy.

This is an important and potentially a serious game changer in FDA attempts to protect the public from the growing evidence of the harmful marketing tactics of Pharma. This jousting between Amarin and the FDA is taking place in the context of the recent approval of “The 21st Century Cures Act,” which was unanimously approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 21, 2015. Toni Clarke reported that language in the bill adds pressure on the FDA to relax its guidelines.

Allen Frances, in his book Saving Normal, published a chart that he called the drug company “hall of shame.” Prepared by Melissa Raven, PhD, it listed the fines and settlements by Pharma companies for off-label promotion, marketing and fraudulent misbranding of 20 well know pharmaceuticals. Most of the companies noted above who are part of the Medical information Working Group were listed there. Here are the companies and their total fines and settlements between 2004 and 2012 recorded in the table in Saving Normal. The fines and settlements combine both civil and criminal cases. Johnson & Johnson ($1.44 billion); GlaxoSmithKline ($3 billion); Abbott ($1.5 billion); Novartis ($422.5 million); Forrest ($313 million); AstraZeneca ($520 million); Pfizer ($2.3 billion); Eli Lily ($1.415 billion); Bristol-Myers Squibb ($515 million); Purdue (almost $635 million). I think it’s clear why Pharma is going after the FDA. The sum total in fines and settlements from the chart was $12.06 billion between 2004 and 2012.

The FDA announced that it plans to hold a public meeting this summer to address drug company concerns with restrictions on what they can say about off-label use of drugs. But as of the beginning of July, I could find no indication of a set date and time for the public meeting. Perhaps the FDA decided to delay scheduling the meeting until there was an indication what would happen with the 21st Century Cures Act. They may also want to see further reaction to its June 23, 2015 brief filed in response to Amarin’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction.

If I wanted to build case law precedents to justify my constitutional right to share certain information about my pharmaceutical products with doctors, I think I’d first try to have the courts rule in favor of a product like pharmaceutical grade fish oil. It’s already sold as a dietary supplement and there are hardly any known side effects. If successful, I’d build on it and the Caronia case by filing additional litigation in an attempt to cut off the FDA regulations against off-label promotion and marketing of pharmaceuticals at the knees.