• Injury Board Blog Networks , Monday, November 7, 2011 10:07 AM

Pharma company GlaxoSmithKline will pay $3 billion against civil and criminal illegal marketing schemes that were the subject of a federal investigation into Glaxo's promotion of diabetes drug Avandia.

In this, the largest legal settlement by the U.S government with a drug company (followed by Pfizer's $2.3 billion settlement a few years ago), medical advisory panels at the FDA had concluded that the very limited benefit of taking the diabetes medication likely did not justify the increased heart attack risk of taking the drug for most patients.

Attorney Joe Saunders argues that the company could well have faced criminal charges for putting "their own financial profits ahead of patient safety." He argues that officers and employees of the company should have faced criminal convictions rather than simply paying shareholder funds to avoid responsibility for the harm that they have done to diabetes patients.

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