Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline said on Thursday that it would pay $3 billion to the U.S. government to settle charges it improperly marketed the diabetes drug Avandia and other products.
The case is not completely settled, but the agreement brings the British drug company and the U.S. government closer to resolving the issue.
“In recent years, we have fundamentally changed our procedures for compliance, marketing, and selling in the U.S. to ensure that we operate with high standards of integrity and that we conduct our business openly and transparently,” GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew Witty said in a statement.
"We reiterate our full commitment to ensuring appropriate promotion of our medicines to health care professionals and to the standards rightly expected by the U.S. government.”
The U.S. government has been trying to clamp down on drug companies' illegal marketing practices, from promoting drugs for unapproved uses to sponsoring clinical trials designed to make drugs appear more effective than they actually are.
Drug makers have also been fighting lawsuits that claim they covered up known serious side effects of drugs while aggressively promoting them. Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission have joined the Justice Department in prosecutions.
In 2009, Pfizer paid $2.3 billion to settle a federal investigation into whether it improperly marketed its painkiller Bextra, and Eli Lilly & Co. pleaded guilty and paid out $1.4 billion for improperly marketing Zyprexa, an antipsychotic drug. Lilly also paid a $515 million fine in that case, the largest ever in a health care case at the time.
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