Genoa – The children's health was just worth a leather bag, or an "all paid" conference in Japan or North America and a few thousand euros or, again, the research contract for the preferred PhD student.
Gifts, favors and money which, according to the public prosecutors of Busto Arsizio and Rimini, managers and scientific representatives of the Sandoz pharmaceutical company they would have used to bribe five university doctors in Genoa and 62 others throughout Italy and convince them to prescribe growth hormones in overdose.
The specialists investigated in Genoa are Roberto Gastaldi, operating at the “Gaslini” Pediatric Institute, Mohamad Mahmoud Maghnie, in service at the Department of Endocrine Diseases of the same hospital in Quarto, Teresa DeToni, at the “Gaslini” pediatric clinic, Francesco Minute, doctor working at the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases of the University of Genoa, and Mara BoschettiPhD student at the same university. Their offices and studios in the hospital and their homes were searched yesterday morning by the carabinieri of the anti-sophistication and health unit. The military seized clinical documentation regarding the introduction of more than 28 patients on therapy with Omnitrope, a growth hormone produced by Sandoz.
It was the Novartis group company itself that provided the investigators with the list of gifts, alleged bribes to Genoese doctors, donated by the scientific rep Gianfranco De Bernardi and by the Area Manager for north-west Italy of the Biopharmaceuticals Division, Raffaella Olga Speranza Giuliano. In a confidential memorandum of Sandoz, dated February 2, 2012 and in a disciplinary dispute of last April 3, it is written, for example: «Ms Giuliano allegedly (together with Mr. De Bernardi) "conceded" between September and December 2009 to Dr. Gastaldi a contribution of an unspecified amount aimed at paying the expenses relating to participation in the ESPE congress held in New York from 9 to 12 September 2009 and participation in the SIEDP congress held in Naples from 5 to 7 November 2009, as consideration for the inclusion of 10 new patients in therapy with Omnitrope".
Again, according to the information that last spring the carabinieri of the Nas
