Fraud of Cancer Drugs - Essay Example

In 1998 a medical sales representative of the famous Eli Lilly drug company, Darryl Ashley identified a discrepancy between the purchased and sold amount of the cancer drug Gemzer by the client Robert Ray Courtney. Although Darryl Ashley felt something was going wrong he was unable to find evidence to convince any malpractice of the pharmacist Robert Courtney. However in 2001, Ashley had a chance to tell his doubt to an oncologist Verda Hunter who had been buying drugs from Robert Courtney. Dr. Hunter decided to test the drugs provided by Robert Courtney and found the drugs were diluted. Dr. Hunter reported to the authorities. The FBI and FDA received several prescribed drugs from Robert Courtney via Dr. Hunter and further tested them. Amazingly reports revealed about 20-40% of dilution of the required amount for all the prescriptions which cannot occur by chance except intentional adulteration. Robert Courtney was arrested in August 2001. He accepted the dilution of drugs in 1990, later estimated by 98,000 prescriptions from 4200 patients. Just before his arrest, he has assets worth $18.7 million. He was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. 

In this case, the crime was the dilution of the cancer drugs Taxol and Gemzar to make high profits. In the law, it was a crime related to false and fraud. He has willingly deceived his clients by giving them diluted cancer drugs. As cancer treatments are critical to saving the life of cancer patients and any delay in effective treatment may cause death, the act of the defendant involved in the death. Therefore he was also sued for wrongful death since diluted drugs were ineffective against cancer and the defendant seemed to know it. Most of the cancer patients had purchased drugs from Robert Courtney throughout their treatment regime without knowing they were ineffective.

The evidence used by the plaintiff was clear and convincing. Evidence was collected by the right method at the right time. Once the dilution was doubted different samples of drugs issued by the defendant had been tested to overcome the possibility of an accidental dilution by chance. The validity of the test result is highly acceptable. In addition, the acknowledgment of the crimes by the defendant without trying to justify his act further reinforced the evidence against him. The defendant never tried to come up with a possible answer to defend himself and instead, he mentioned that he has done these alterations to the cancer drugs deliberately to increase the profits.

Clear evidence and acknowledgment of the misconduct by the defendant were helpful to sentence the defendant to prison for 30 years and pay compensations as high as USD 2.2 billion for the victim under wrongful death.