Former drug execs acquitted of kickbacks

Former drug execs acquitted of kickbacks

	Published : Thu, 03 May 2007 23:25 By : Agencies Print this Story

BOSTON (AP) - Four former executives at drug company Serono Laboratories were acquitted Thursday of paying and offering to pay kickbacks to doctors in exchange for writing prescriptions for an AIDS drug with declining sales.

Former vice presidents John Bruens and Mary Stewart, and regional sales directors Melissa Vaughn and Marc Sirockman, were indicted in April 2005 for allegedly sending doctors who wrote prescriptions for the drug Serostim on an all-expense paid trip to attend a medical conference in Cannes, France.

Prosecutors said the executives were trying to boost sales of Serostim. The drug was approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in 1996 to treat AIDS wasting, an often-fatal condition involving severe weight loss that was common among AIDS patients at the time.

At about the same time the FDA approved the drug, protease inhibitor drugs came on the market. Those drugs helped curtail the AIDS virus in patients, making them less prone to AIDS wasting.

Demand for Serostim began to fall and at a meeting in Boston in March 1999, Bruens and Stewart told Vaughn, Sirockman and several other regional sales directors that they needed to 'dig their way out' of a financial crisis, according to the indictment.

Sales directors were required to identify the highest prescribing physicians in their region and then target them with free trips to boost prescriptions to $6 million in 6 days, prosecutors said.

A jury in U.S. District Court deliberated less than three hours before acquitting all four executives Thursday.

Vaughn's attorney, Adam Hoffinger, said the trip was not offered in exchange for writing prescriptions for Serostim.

'They had no intent to bribe any doctors, and they did not bribe any doctors,' Hoffinger said. 'It was a legitimate medical conference.'

All four executives left Serono between 1999 and 2000.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Serono is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and has its U.S. headquarters in Rockland, Mass.

In December 2005, Serono Laboratories agreed to pay $704 million fine to settle similar claims that it offered kickbacks to doctors in an effort to boost sales of Serostim.