StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Fraud of Cancer Drugs - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The essay "Fraud of Cancer Drugs" focuses on the critical analysis of the case of fraud of cancer drugs. Robert Courtney’s Case was one of the large pharmaceutical frauds that continued for more than a decade involving an estimated 4200 cancer patients and liable for several wrongful deaths…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98.2% of users find it useful
Fraud of Cancer Drugs
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Fraud of Cancer Drugs"

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.

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Criminal/civil law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/other/1417957-criminal-civil-law
(Criminal/Civil Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words)
https://studentshare.org/other/1417957-criminal-civil-law.
“Criminal/Civil Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/other/1417957-criminal-civil-law.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Fraud of Cancer Drugs

Infliximab Drug Monograph

The drug has also been confirmed as one of the best drugs in the treatment of active psoriatic arthritis among adults and children who are above the age of six years.... The paper "Infliximab Drug Monograph" discusses that patients should be evaluated and monitored frequently to detect the possibility of any active infection....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper

Drug Shortage in Pharmaceutical Industry

To add to this, there are over dozens of clinical trials which have been stopped due to the shortage of sufficient supplies of cancer drugs that are used as controls or major segments of treatment arms (Jill, 2011).... The concept of a pharmaceutical industry refers to the development, production, and marketing of the drugs which are licensed for the utilization as medicines (John, Horst, Gerd, 2007).... The industry researches discover and develop the drugs which are utilized by humanity to cure certain diseases and illnesses....
7 Pages (1750 words) Term Paper

Whole Milk and Meat is no Good for Children

The paper provides an in depth analysis on various effects of consumption of milk and its correlation with the development of cancer.... The paper provides an in depth analysis on various effects of consumption of milk and its correlation with the development of cancer.... Key words: Recombinant bovine growth hormones, antibiotics, inorganic milk, cancer, early onset puberty, FDA Whole Milk and Meat not Good for Children Introduction: Milk has always been attributed as a powerhouse of many nutritional ingredients that are essential for bone growth and other body developments....
7 Pages (1750 words) Research Paper

Elder Fraud in the USA

Another common elder fraud in nursing is counterfeit prescription drugs which mainly are conducted through the internet.... Elder people usually obtain drugs that may even lead to more harm and worsening of their medical conditions (Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2012).... Elderly people are also interested in products or medicines that increase their cognitive functioning, physical conditioning, and anti-cancer products thus increasing their vulnerability to fraudsters (Busch, 2012)....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Drug Companys Restriction of Distribution of a Drug: A Genentech on Avastin Restriction

An attempt to investigate the long-term comparison between the two drugs was still on-going, yet an early result of the prospective randomized controlled trial reveals no difference between Avastin and Lucentis ineffectiveness for choroidal neovascularization secondary to AMD5.... This paper investigates the ethical and legal views of Genentech's (Genetic Engineering Technology, Inc....
5 Pages (1250 words) Case Study

Cetuximab for treating Colorectal

drugs Today (Barc).... Expression of the targetAccording to Brand, Iida and Wheeler (2011) “many human epithelial cancers including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal cancer (CRC), breast, pancreatic and brain cancer” (p.... In the absence of this process the net effect would lead to the activation of cells to proliferate, metastatic and survival of potential cancer cells (Oliveras-Ferraros et al 2008; Chen et al 2012)....
1 Pages (250 words) Essay

Pharmacology case studies

When used in the treatment of Chronic Myeloid leukaemia, the drug should be given as follows; the patient should first be pre-medicated with anti-convulsion drugs followed by an initial busulfan dose of 60 mcg/kg/day or 1.... It is sometimes also given in high doses before bone marrow or stem cell transplantations for leukaemia and other cancer types....
4 Pages (1000 words) Case Study

Drug Shortage in Pharmaceutical Industry

To add to this, there are over dozens of clinical trials that have been stopped due to the shortage of sufficient supplies of cancer drugs that are used as controls or major segments of treatment arms (Jill, 2011).... The concept of a pharmaceutical industry refers to the development, production, and marketing of the drugs which are licensed for utilization as medicines (John, Horst, Gerd, 2007).... The industry researches discover and develop the drugs which are utilized by humanity for the purpose of curing certain diseases and illnesses....
7 Pages (1750 words) Coursework
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us