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Pfizer = Greed

Pfizer Inc.
235 E. 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017
212-733-2323
www.pfizer.com

Employees: 116,500
2009 revenues: $50 billion
2009 net income: $8.6 billion
Publicly traded on New York Stock Exchange; ticker symbol: PFE

As of October 16, 2009, Wyeth became a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer Inc. Two members of the board of Wyeth are now on the board of Pfizer – Frances Fergusson and John Mascotte.

Below the Pfizer information, we include information about Wyeth (before the merger) to better understand the unbridled greed involved in this merger. The companies, now one institution under the Pfizer name, do not have respectable records as socially-responsible corporations.

The intimate connections between Pfizer and Prudential are also noteworthy. Prudential Financial, like Pfizer/Wyeth, also has a disreputable history and is using its financial clout to undermine the labor movement and, specifically, working conditions for IBEW Local 103 members by making building projects free of union electricians.

Two of Pfizer's directors, William H. Gray, III and Constance Horner, are also directors of Prudential Financial, which on 12/31/09 held 27,817,766 shares of Pfizer's common stock valued at $495,434,412.

Top Executives

Jeffrey B. Kindler
Chairman and Chief Executive
2009 Compensation: $14.9 million Kindler joined Pfizer in 2002 as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. He was named Vice Chairman in 2005 and appointed CEO in 2006. He serves on the boards of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Tufts University.

Frank D’Amelio
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
He joined the company in September 2007. He serves on the Board of Directors of Humana, Inc. and the JPMorgan Chase National Advisory Board.

Martin Mackay
Senior Vice President & President-PharmaTherapeutics Research & Development
Mackay began his career at Pfizer in 1995 and he is a board member of ViiV Healthcare, the global specialist HIV company established by GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. He serves on the Scientific and Regulatory Committee of the industry trade group PhRMA.

Pfizer 2009 Executive Compensation

2009	Total compensation
J. Kindler, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer	$14,898,038
F. D'Amelio, Chief Financial Officer	$7,858,969
I. Read, Group President, Worldwide Biopharmaceutical Businesses	$9,447,036
M. Mackay, President,  Pharmatherapeutics Research & Development	$5,878,806
F. Lewis-Hall, Chief Medical Officer	$5,087,263

(***CLICK to view the entire table)

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Dennis A. Ausiello, M.D.
The Jackson Professor of Clinical Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital since 1996. Director of MicroCHIPS (drug delivery technology).

Michael S. Brown, M.D.
Director since 1996. Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences since 1989 and Regental Professor since 1985 at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and Director of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

M. Anthony Burns
Our Director since 1988. Director of The Black & Decker Corporation and J.C. Penney Company, Inc. Life Trustee of the University of Miami.

Robert N. Burt
Director since 2000. Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of FMC Corporation.

W. Don Cornwell
. Our Director since 1997.  Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Granite Broadcasting Corporation since August 2009. Director of Avon Products, Inc. Director of the Wallace Foundation.

Frances D. Fergusson, Ph.D.  
Director since October 2009. Dr. Fergusson is President Emeritus of Vassar College. Director of Mattel, Inc.

William H. Gray III
Director since 2000, William H. Gray III is Co-Chairman of the Gray-Loeffler Group, a business advisory and consulting firm. Former U.S. Congressman from the Second District of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1991. Director of Dell Inc., J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., Prudential Financial, Inc. and Visteon Corporation.

Constance J. Horner
Director since 1993 and Lead Director since February 2007. Director of Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited and Prudential Financial, Inc., Fellow, National Academy of Public Administration; Member of the Board of Trustees of the Prudential Foundation.

James M. Kilts
Director since September 2007. Founding Partner, Centerview Partners Management, LLC, a private equity and financial advisory firm, since 2006. Director of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and Meadwestvaco Corporation. Trustee of Knox College and the University of Chicago.

Jeffrey B. Kindler
Pfizer Chairman and CEO. See biography above.

George A. Lorch
Director since 2000. Chairman Emeritus of Armstrong Holdings, Inc. Director of Autoliv, Inc. and The Williams Companies, Inc., HSBC Finance Co. and HSBC North America Holding Company.

John P. Mascotte
Director since October 2009. Retired President and Chief Executive Officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, Inc.

Suzanne Nora Johnson
Director since September 2007. Retired Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Director of American International Group, Inc., Intuit and VISA.

Stephen W. Sanger
Director since February 2009. Former Chairman  and CEO of General Mills, Inc. Director of Target Corporation and Wells Fargo & Company.

William C. Steere, Jr.
Director since 1987 Director since 1987, Former Chairman and CEO of Pfizer Inc. Director of MetLife.

2009 Non-Employee Director Compensation

Name	Fees Earned	Stock Awards(1)	All Other	Total
	or Paid in Cash	($)	Compensation (2)	($)
	($)		($)
Dr. Ausiello	127,014	73,040	6,500	206,554
Dr. Brown	143,403	73,040	—	216,443
Mr. Burns	108,611	73,040	—	181,651
Mr. Burt	101,806	73,040	30,000	204,846
Mr. Cornwell	113,611	73,040	10,000	196,651
Dr. Fergusson	16,816	97,130	13,050	126,996
Mr. Gray	103,611	73,040	318	176,969
Ms. Horner	125,000	73,040	250	198,290
Mr. Kilts	101,806	73,040	15,000	189,846
Mr. Lorch	105,000	73,040	1,000	179,040
Mr. Mascotte2	16,816	97,130	—	113,946
Dr. Mead1	110,000	73,040	25,000	208,040
Ms. Nora Johnson	118,611	73,040	15,000	206,651
Mr. Sanger	95,972	153,230	—	249,202
Mr. Steere	85,000	73,040	80,000	238,040

*** 1. Dr. Mead did not run for the board in 2010.

*** 2. Mr. Mascotte joined the board in October 2009.

Business Update

In January 2009, Pfizer, Inc. and Wyeth announced that they had reached an agreement whereby Pfizer would acquire Wyeth in what was described as "a blockbuster deal that values Wyeth at $68 billion and creates the world's largest pharmaceutical company, with initial sales totaling $71.3 billion." On October 16, 2009, Wyeth became a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer Inc.

On January 27, 2009, the Hartford Courant reported that Pfizer confirmed its planned acquisition of Wyeth would lead to thousands of layoffs.

The Washington Post ran an article on January 28, 2009, entitled "Not What the Doctor Ordered." Reporter Steven Pearlstein wrote: "Three things are indisputably true about the pharmaceutical industry:

"Over the past decade, there has been significant cross-border consolidation, involving major pharmaceutical companies and promising biotech firms.

"Whatever operating efficiencies that consolidation may have generated, none of it was passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.

"During the same period, there has been a steady decline in the number of important new drugs flowing from company research labs.

"All of which ought to raise serious questions about why the government's antitrust regulators should approve the latest industry mega-merger in which No. 2 Pfizer proposes to buy No. 11 Wyeth in a deal valued at $68 billion.

"The impetus for this merger couldn't have been clearer: In 2011, the patent will expire on Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug, Lipitor, which now accounts for a quarter of the company's revenue, and there is little in Pfizer's development pipeline to replace it.

"Unable to stop the slide in its stock price by creating new drugs, Pfizer has concluded that the next best way to keep shareholders happy is through financial engineering…"

"It is also important to remember that this is an industry that deserves to be treated with deep suspicion by antitrust regulators because of its congenital distaste for competition.

"It is an industry that spends lavishly on lawyers and lobbyists to protect and extend its patents and throw up endless challenges to approvals of competitive drugs.

"It is an industry in which companies rarely compete on the basis of price, both because its patents give it near-monopoly pricing power and because the people who decide which drug to use (doctors) are not the ones who pay the bills (insurers and consumers).

"It is an industry in which companies facing expiration of lucrative patents routinely pay millions of dollars to potential rivals to delay the introduction of lower-priced generic drugs under the guise of "joint ventures"— payments that the Federal Trade Commission has described as kickbacks designed to lessen competition…

"The Pfizer-Wyeth deal offers a wonderful opportunity for a new administration in Washington to signal the end of the era of anything-goes mergers, and to apply the antitrust laws in creative new ways to innovative high-tech industries that are the key to America's economic future."
[see link to full article below]

Sensitive Issues

Pfizer has been at the center of one controversy or another since the late 1950s, when it pioneered aggressive marketing techniques for its prescription drugs. A prominent article in the Saturday Review denounced the company for tactics such as running ads for its antibiotics that displayed the names of doctors who were supposedly endorsing the product but who turned out to be fictitious.

During the 1980s the company came under fire when serious manufacturing defects were blamed in the deaths of scores of people using artificial heart valves made by Pfizer's Shiley division.¹ In 1986 Pfizer ended production of the valves, but by that point they were implanted in tens of thousands of people, who worried that the devices could fracture and fail at any moment. In 1990 a Congressional investigation charged that Pfizer knowingly sold the valves even after it knew of the dangers and that it failed to keep the Food and Drug Administration fully informed of the problems.²

In 1992 Pfizer agreed to pay up to $205 million to settle lawsuits that had been brought in connection with the valves, which by that point had been implicated in about 300 deaths.³ Even so, Pfizer resisted complying with an FDA order that it notify patients of new findings that there was a greater risk of fatal fractures.⁴ In 1994 the company agreed to pay $10.75 million to settle Justice Department charges that it lied to federal regulators about the valves.⁵

Pfizer also ran into new trouble with its advertising practices. In 1991 the company paid a total of $70,000 to 10 states to settle charges relating to misleading advertising for its Plax mouth rinse.⁶ In 2003 Pfizer paid $6 million to settle with 19 states that had accused the company of using misleading ads to promote its Zithromax medication for children's ear infections.⁷ In 2008, Pfizer cancelled a new series of ads for Lipitor featuring artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik amid a Congressional investigation of charges that the ads were misleading.⁸

Along with deceptive marketing to consumers, Pfizer was accused of inducing doctors to prescribe its products in improper ways. In 2004 the company agreed to pay $430 million to resolve criminal and civil charges that it paid physicians to prescribe its epilepsy drug Neurontin to patients with ailments for which the medication was not approved.⁹ Documents later came to light suggesting that Pfizer arranged for delays in the publication of scientific studies that undermined its claim for the other uses of Neurontin.¹⁰

The company also faced criticism of its high drug prices. In 2002 Pfizer resisted cooperating with a General Accounting Office investigation of industry pricing practices but relented after chairman and CEO Henry McKinnell was served with a subpoena. Later that year, Pfizer agreed to pay $42 million to settle charges that one of its subsidiaries defrauded the federal Medicaid program by overcharging for its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor.¹¹

In 2004, in the wake of revelations about dangerous side effects of Merck's painkiller Vioxx, the FDA pressured Pfizer to remove its similar medication Bextra from the market. The company also agreed to suspend television advertising for a related medication called Celebrex. When Pfizer resumed advertising of the drug in 2007 it did so with a commercial that was criticized by the watchdog group Public Citizen for making false or misleading statements about its risks.¹²

In 2008, Pfizer announced that it was setting aside $894 million to settle the lawsuits that had been filed in connection with Bextra and Celebrex.¹³ Yet in 2009 the company had to pay much more – $2.3 billion – to resolve criminal and civil charges related to the improper marketing of Bextra and three other medications. The amount was a record for a healthcare fraud settlement. John Kopchinski, a former Pfizer sales representative whose complaint helped bring about the federal investigation, told the New York Times: "The whole culture of Pfizer is driven by sales, and if you didn't sell drugs illegally, you were not seen as a team player."¹⁴

On March12, 2010, CNN's AC360° ran a story raising the question, Is Pfizer too big to be allowed to fail. Although Pfizer had been fined $2.3 billion, the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Justice Department over fraudulent marketing practices, the fine was like a slap on the wrist equal to about three months profits for the company. By law, a company convicted of major fraud should automatically be kicked out of Medicare and Medicaid. And high level executives should receive prison sentences. What CNN's report points out is how the government allowed Pfizer to place the blame on subsidiaries that were companies on paper only, with no assets. This basically allows Pfizer to continue with business as usual.

What makes the fraudulent marketing practices so serious is that Pfizer placed many patients at risk and bilked the healthcare system and taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pfizer apparently engaged in questionable practices abroad as well. In 2000 the Washington Post published a major expose accusing Pfizer of testing a dangerous new drug on children in Nigeria without receiving proper consent from their parents.¹⁵ The experiment occurred during a 1996 meningitis epidemic in the country. In 2001 Pfizer was sued in U.S. federal court for human rights violations and was then the subject of a criminal investigation by the FDA. In 2006 a panel of Nigerian medical experts concluded that Pfizer had violated international law.¹⁶ In 2009 the company agreed to pay $75 million to settle lawsuits brought in Nigerian courts.¹⁷

With the acquisition of Wyeth in October 2009, Pfizer took on a new set of legal problems. The summary of legal proceedings in Wyeth's last annual financial report before the deal was announced went on for 14 pages.¹⁸ Most of the lawsuits discussed were product liability cases involving hormone therapy, childhood vaccines, the anti-depressant Effexor, the contraceptive Norplant and, most importantly, the combination diet drug known as fen-phen, which was withdrawn from the market more than a decade ago after reports that its use was linked to possibly fatal heart valve damage. The findings unleashed a wave of tens of thousands of lawsuits against the company, formerly known as American Home Products, including a case in Texas in which a jury awarded a single plaintiff more than $1 billion in damages. The company set up a $3.75 billion fund as part of the attempted resolution of a national class action case. Another $1.3 billion was added to the fund in 2006. Many plaintiffs opted out of the class and negotiated individual settlements with the company.

1. Irvin Molotsky, "Recall Urged of Heart Valve Said to Have a Serious Defect," New York Times, June 27, 1985, p.D23; http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/27/us/recall-urged-of-heart-valve-said-to-have-a-serious-defect.html
2. "State Officials Urged to Prosecute Pfizer in Heart Valve Cases," Corporate Crime Reporter, March 12, 1990.
3. "Lawsuit Settled Over Heart Valve Implicated in About 300 Deaths," New York Times, January 25, 1992; http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/25/us/lawsuit-settled-over-heart-valve-implicated-in-about-300-deaths.html
4. Barry Meier, "Maker of Heart Valve Balks Over Some Warnings," New York Times, April 26, 1992; http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/us/maker-of-heart-valve-balks-over-some-warnings.html
5. Barry Meier, "Pfizer Unit to Settle Charges of Lying About Heart Valve," New York Times, July 2, 1994; http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/02/business/pfizer-unit-to-settle-charges-of-lying-about-heart-valve.html
6. "The Media Business: Pfizer's Pact on Plax Ads," New York Times, February 21, 1991; http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/21/business/the-media-business-advertising-pfizer-s-pact-on-plax-ads.html
7. "California: 19 States Settle with Pfizer over Drug Ads," Los Angeles Times, January 7, 2003 (via Nexis).
8. "Pfizer Cancels Lipitor Ads," Washington Post, February 26, 2008 (via Nexis).
9. Gardiner Harris, "Pfizer to Pay $430 Million Over Promoting Drug to Doctors," New York Times, May 14, 2004; http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/14/business/pfizer-to-pay-430-million-over-promoting-drug-to-doctors.html
10. Stephanie Saul, "Experts Conclude Pfizer Manipulated Studies," New York Times, October 8, 2008; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/health/research/08drug.html
11. "Pfizer to Pay $49 Million in Fraud Cases," New York Times, October 29, 2002; http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/business/pfizer-to-pay-49-million-in-fraud-case.html
12. Stephanie Saul, "TV Ad for Pfizer's Painkiller Criticized by Consumer Group," New York Times, April 10, 2007; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/media/10celebrex.html
13. Stephanie Saul, "Pfizer in $894 Million Drug Settlement," New York Times, October 18, 2008; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/business/18drug.html
14. Gardiner Harris, "Pfizer to Pay $2.3 Billion to Settle Inquiry Over Marketing," New York Times, September 3, 2009; http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E3D8143CF930A3575AC0A96F9C8B63&scp=2&sq=Pfizer+%2B+%242.3+Billion&st=nyt
15. Joe Stephens, "Where Profits and Lives Hang in the Balance," Washington Post, December 17, 2000 (via Nexis).
16. Joe Stephens, "Panel Faults Pfizer in '96 Clinical Trial in Nigeria," Washington Post, May 7, 2006; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/06/AR2006050601338.html
17. Joe Stephens, "Pfizer to Pay $75 Million to Settle Trovan-Testing Suit," Washington Post, July 31, 2009; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073001847.html
18. http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/78/781/78193/items/283760/Wyeth_FR_07_lo.pdf

Product Liability Litigation
The annual report of Wyeth contains a 15-page section describing the long list of lawsuits and regulatory proceedings the company is facing. Most of the lawsuits are product liability cases involving products such as hormone therapy, childhood vaccines, the anti-depressant Effexor, and the contraceptive Norplant.

The most significant of these is the litigation involving the combination diet drug known as fen-phen, which was withdrawn from the market more than a decade ago after reports that its use was linked to possibly fatal heart valve damage. The findings unleashed a wave of tens of thousands of lawsuits against the company, including a case in Texas in which a jury awarded a single plaintiff more than $1 billion in damages. The company set up a $3.75 billion fund as part of the attempted resolution of a national class action case. Another $1.3 billion was added to the fund in 2006. Many plaintiffs opted out of the class and negotiated individual settlements with the company. Wyeth has paid well over $10 billion to resolve lawsuits over the drug.

In November 2008, a state appeals court reinstated a San Francisco woman's lawsuit accusing Wyeth of failing to warn of the risk of a muscular disorder she contracted after using the company's anti-heartburn medication. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the plaintiff, Elizabeth Conte, "said she came down with tardive dyskinesia, an incurable condition that causes repeated involuntary muscle movements, after taking the generic version of Reglan…She sued the generic manufacturers as well as Wyeth, Inc., maker of the widely prescribed Reglan claiming their labels understated the dangers of long-term use."

Thousands of women have sued Wyeth after taking Premarin or another HRT drug and developing breast cancer. In 2008, a jury awarded three such Nevada women $134 million (later reduced to $58 million).

Advocates for animals have long decried Wyeth's hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drug, Premarin, obtained from the urine of pregnant horses confined in cramped stalls, denied free access to water and made to stand up for twenty hours a day, only to be auctioned and slaughtered when too old to bear foals.

Now Wyeth and other firms are "hoping the Supreme Court will sharply curb" the "right to sue drug companies for deaths or injuries caused by medicines" (Wall Street Journal, 10/27/08). In Wyeth vs. Levine, a Vermont guitarist who lost an arm to gangrene caused by an improperly administered nausea drug was awarded $6.7 million in damages by a jury accepting her argument that Wyeth should have put stronger warnings on the label. Vermont's highest court upheld the verdict, but in an appeal Wyeth seeks what a New York Times editorial (11/7/08) described as "grant(ing) drug companies immunity based on a phony assertion that state lawsuits improperly usurp federal regulatory authority."

FDA Rejects Several Wyeth Drugs
According to Alternet.org of the Independent Media Institute, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2007 " …rejected Wyeth's osteoporosis drug, bazedoxifene, because of stroke and blood clot problems, its schizophrenia drug, bifeprunox, because it was not as effective as other drugs on the market and its menopause drug, Pristiq, because of serious heart or liver complications experienced by trial participants."

Wyeth Involved in Medical Ghostwriting Scandal
The New York Times reported on December 12, 2008 that “Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, paid ghostwriters to produce medical journal articles favorable to its female hormone replacement therapy Prempro, according to Congressional letters seeking more information about the company's involvement in medical ghostwriting. At least one article was published even after a federal study found the drug raised the risk of breast cancer…”

According to the Times, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in December 2008, wrote to Wyeth's Chairman and CEO Bernard Poussot: "Any attempt to manipulate the scientific literature, that can in turn mislead doctors to prescribe drugs that may not work and/or cause harm to their patients, is very troubling." [see link to full article below]

Racial Discrimination Charges
Seven racial discrimination lawsuits have been filed against Wyeth by current and former employees at its plant in Pearl River, New York. The cases are still pending.

Pfizer/Wyeth Deal a Distaster
Paul Rogat Loeb, author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association wrote in a January 28, 2009 article in Commondreams.org about Pfizer's recent acquisition of Wyeth: 

"Are U.S. taxpayers getting stiffed? Pfizer, Viagra's daddy, is using money from taxpayer-bailed-out banks to help buy major pharmaceutical competitor Wyeth in a $68 billion deal. That won't help taxpayers or consumers. Nor is it designed to. It will harm the companies' workers, 20,000 of whom will likely be laid off.  It's even likely to hurt small bio-tech companies, drying up potential sources of capital and leaving fewer potential major investors or purchasers.

"The deal may be good for Pfizer, helping the company recover from a $2.3 billion legal settlement over misleading marketing on the pain reliever Bextra, and helping them amplify the clout of the $3 million they recently spent lobbying against the right to import cheaper drugs from Canada. But it won't help the rest of us."

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Below are excerpts from news articles highlighting troubling issues with the company. See for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.