AZ Chief Pledges Action on Bucket of Money Scandal ... or Does He?

According to the Independent today, AZ CEO Dave Brennan has promised to make heads roll if his internal investigators find any more nastiness in the Arimidex Bucket of Money business. But a close look at what Brennan was actually quoted as saying indicates ... er ... not very much.

While the lede of the Indie story says "AstraZeneca will discipline more of its US sales team if allegations of illegal marketing tactics are proven to be true, the drug company's chief executive promised," that's not exactly what Brennan is quoted as saying in the story.

In fact, the Indie doesnt't report what Brennan said until the very end of the story--a surefire indication that the reporter is trying to spin a very brief quote from Brennan into a major development. Here's what Brennan actually said:

[He said that misbehaviour within parts of a drug company's sales organisation was rare and] "relatively unpredictable", [and the important question was how a company dealt with it.]

OK, that's a truism, and doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. He continues:

"There was an issue and we took action; if there is another issue, we will take more action. We have in place a very thorough and well-understood compliance programme in the US and across the entire business, with codes of conduct and operating principles and annual training, and I take all that very seriously."

The action here is presumably the firing of Mike Zubillaga. The promised action? It's prefaced with a Big If. That's an interesting "if" given that AZ's own training tapes appear to encourage exactly what Zubillaga was fired for encouraging—comparing Arimidex to Femara in violation of AZ's settlement with the OIG. Zubillaga sure didn't play the rep, the doc and the narrator on those tapes. (One of them was a woman!) Even if he ordered them made, he had help. So we'll see if Brennan's "if"  turns into action ...

Brennan continues:

"As for any particular situation at any particular point of time, I would say that the management responded by doing what they thought they ought to do."

Well, duh.

The article is interesting not because Brennan has said anything that wasn't known already, but because it demonstrates that the issue is on his radar. How long it stays there is another question entirely.

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