Do you remember the criminal case that was brought against Pfizer for fraudulent marketing of the painkiller Bextra? I first heard about this on the CNBC show "American Greed."

The drug was part of a "revolutionary" class of painkillers known as Cox-2 inhibitors that were supposed to be safer than generic drugs, but at 20 times the price of ibuprofen. But medical studies, including some done at Pfizer, showed that the drug posed an increase risk of death from heart attack or stroke. In 1991, the FDA ordered that Bextra could only be sold for a very limited purpose (arthritis and menstrual cramps). It further ordered that Bextra could not be prescribed for acute surgical pain.

Not only did Pfizer ignore that, its sales managers engaged in an aggressive marketing campaign, paying off anesthesiologists, foot surgeons, orthopedic surgeons and oral surgeons to become educational advocates for the drug. At least one Pfizer manager wrote a sales pitch for doctors to use with their patients, claiming that the FDA had given Bextra "a clean bill of health" all the way up to a 40 mg dose. That was twice what the FDA actually said was safe.

Internal company documents show that the fraud included a multimillion-dollar medical education budget to pay hundreds of doctors as speakers and consultants to tout Bextra.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/02/pfizer.bextra/index.html