As I’ve mentioned before, the game plan for most pharmaceutical companies these days seems to be to (a) get a drug approved for a limited indication, and then (b) promote it as a cure for every ailment known to man.  I thought the figures below were interesting:

The Justice Department on Tuesday joined a whistle-blower lawsuit against Pfizer and its subsidiary Wyeth Pharmaceuticals that accuses Wyeth of illegal off-label marketing of Rapamune, a drug used to prevent rejection of kidney transplants.

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The filing continued a crackdown on drug industry fraud. Over the last three years, the government has also settled false claims suits against Bristol-Myers Squibb for $515 million, AstraZeneca for $520 million, Eli Lilly for $1.4 billion, and last week, a unit of Forest Laboratories for $313 million.

Source: U.S. Joins Whistle-Blower Suit Against Pfizer – NYTimes.com

Over the last three years, the government recovered over $2 billion dollars.  If that’s what was actually recovered, one wonders how  much hasn’t yet been recovered.