Female and elder consumers and payers
sue Pfizer over deceptive marketing of Lipitor^®

Plaintiffs allege promotional scheme to boost sales of world's best-selling drug by misleading women and seniors about link between the drug and heart disease

Boston – Consumers have filed the first-of-its-kind nationwide class-action lawsuit against Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), claiming the world"s largest drug company misled consumers into using its anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor despite the absence of evidence from clinical trials that these drugs are of any benefit to large segments of the population.

According to Steve Berman, the lead attorney for the proposed class, Pfizer promoted Lipitor by claiming it prevents heart disease in women and the elderly, where no clinical test has established such a benefit. In fact, according to the complaint, women without heart disease taking Lipitor actually developed 10 percent ­more heart attacks than women treated with a placebo.

The lawsuit alleges that Pfizer engaged in a massive campaign to convince both doctors and patients that Lipitor is a beneficial treatment for nearly everyone with elevated cholesterol, even though no studies have shown it to be effective for women and those over 65 years of age who do not already have heart disease or diabetes.

Normally, drugs become widely used as treatments for patients only when a well-designed clinical trial finds that the drug is safe and effective for patients of the same type and age. No such trial has shown that Lipitor helps the elderly or females without prior heart disease.  "We believe Pfizer intentionally ignored the scientific evidence – and lack thereof – and launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign designed to push the drug to anyone they could convince to buy it,” Berman said. “We intend to prove that Pfizer pocketed billions in sales to those who do not benefit from Lipitor.”

Lipitor is in the class of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins and it is the best-selling drug in the world, with sales in 2004 of more than $10 billion.

According to John Abramson MD, clinical instructor of ambulatory care at Harvard Medical School and author of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine, the scientific picture is clear.

“The idea that lowering cholesterol always reduces the risk of heart disease has become the conventional wisdom, which drug companies like Pfizer have taken great pains to promote.  But for women under 65 and people over 65 with no history of heart disease or diabetes, the evidence just isn’t there,” Abramson said. “Millions of women and seniors are spending huge sums to take Lipitor every day despite a lack of proof that it’s doing anything beneficial for them, and may actually be harming the elderly.”

Alex Sugerman-Brozan, director of the Prescription Access Litigation Project, added, “We believe that the evidence will shine light on the ways that drug companies like Pfizer work to manipulate most of what we know about prescription drugs, from the research to the guidelines that doctors follow.” One of the organizations suing Pfizer, Health Care For All, is a member of the Prescription Access Litigation Project.

The suit claims that Pfizer’s promotional campaign has resulted in billions of dollars in unnecessary drug spending among these two groups of patients at a time when drug and general healthcare costs are spiraling out of control. 

Nancy Yost, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, is a 73-year-old woman with no history of heart disease who has been taking Lipitor for several years. “With the high cost of prescription drugs today, no seniors I know can afford to pay for a drug that doesn’t do what it promises,” Ms. Yost said.  “I’m disappointed that Pfizer is spending millions to convince seniors to pay top dollar for a drug without full disclosure of its effectiveness. It shows that the drug industry’s priorities are skewed when they spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research.”

Health Care For All noted the high economic cost to taxpayers. “We all pay the price for the over-prescription of drugs, like Lipitor, because we have to foot much of the bill for state pharmacy programs for seniors and soon for the Medicare drug benefit,” said Melissa Shannon, Consumer Health Policy Coordinator of Health Care For All.  “We can’t allow drug companies to trick seniors into taking expensive, unnecessary drugs that will drive up the already-high costs that Medicare will be paying for seniors’ drugs.”

 According to the ASCOT study, the largest clinical trial of the effectiveness of statin therapy in women, there is reason to be concerned.  The study of 2000 women at increased risk of developing heart disease found that the women who took Lipitor developed 10% more heart attacks than the women who took a placebo.

The proposed class action seeks to represent women who have taken Lipitor and who have no history of heart disease or diabetes; people aged 65 and over who have taken Lipitor and who have no history of heart disease or diabetes; and third-party payers such as insurance companies, union health and welfare funds, self-insured employers and others, who paid for Lipitor for patients in either of these two groups.

The lawsuit alleges that Pfizer violated state consumer protection laws against deceptive advertising and seeks reimbursement for women and seniors and third-party payers who bought Lipitor unnecessarily as a result of Pfizer’s deceptive marketing and promotional campaign. “We intend to prove in this case that Pfizer’s false advertising created an enormous artificial demand for Lipitor, much of which would not exist if Pfizer had fully and fairly disclosed the truth about the drug” said Berman.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Boston, was filed by Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, on behalf of several individuals, Health Care For All, and the Teamsters.

About Prescription Access Litigation Project
Prescription Access Litigation Project (PAL)  is a project of Boston-based Community Catalyst. PAL is a nationwide coalition of over 110 state, local, and national senior, labor and consumer health advocacy groups in 35 states fighting to make prescription drugs affordable. Since its launch in 2001, PAL members have filed 23 sets of lawsuits targeting drug industry practices that illegally push the price of prescription drugs beyond the reach of the American consumer.  

About Community Catalyst
Community Catalyst (www.communitycatalyst.org) is a Boston-based national advocacy organization that builds consumer and community participation in the shaping of our health system to ensure quality, affordable health care for all.

About Health Care For All
Health Care For All (http://www.hcfama.org) is a consumer advocacy organization building a movement of empowered people and organizations with the goal of creating a health care system that is responsive to the needs of all people, particularly the most vulnerable. Health Care For All is dedicated to making quality health care a right of all people.

About Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro is a law firm with offices in Seattle, Cambridge, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The firm has developed a nationally recognized practice in class-action litigation. The firm is co-lead counsel in litigation to recover losses from Enron employees' retirement funds and represented Washington and 12 other states in lawsuits against the tobacco industry that resulted in the largest settlement in the history of litigation. The firm also served as counsel in several other high-profile cases including the Washington Public Power Supply litigation, which resulted in a settlement of more than $850 million, and the $92.5 million settlement of The Boeing Company litigation. Other notable cases include litigation involving the Exxon Valdez oil spill; Louisiana Pacific Siding; Morrison Knudsen; Piper Jaffray; Nordstrom; Boston Chicken; Noah's Bagels; TAP Pharmaceutical’s Lupron litigation; and SmithKline Beecham’s Paxil Litigation.