Of Chiara Daina | 30 May 2014 The Fact Chronicle
Memory has short legs. Given that it is dutiful and right the request for compensation of 1.2 billion euros by the Ministry of Health to Swiss companies Roche and Novartis for damage caused to the National health system, it cannot be said that the problem of speculation by pharmaceutical companies on citizens' health is resolved. And it certainly won't even be a fine from the Antitrust (the 180 million euro one that the two Swiss giants got themselves last March) to prevent that Big Pharma you keep making profit on people's life and death. It didn't help fine Pfizer 10.6 million euros in 2012 for creating the monopoly of latanoprost, the molecule for the glaucoma treatment. Nor to force the American company to compensate the Italian state by paying out 14 million euros. Also useless US fine imposed $2.3 billion in 2009 for Bextra, an anti-inflammatory, which was later withdrawn from the market. A series of other stratospheric fines have been worth very little: the one from $1.4 billion apiece Eli Lilly for having illegally marketed an antipsychotic, Zyprexa, with harmful effects (2009); the one from
