Pfizer paying out millions, again, to settle off-label promotion charges in the US

Once again, US pharma giant Pfizer is having to pay out millions of dollars to the US federal government and states to settle charges of illegal promotion of the company's medicines, with the latest settlements totaling about $98 million1. While a far cry from the $2.3 billion the New York drug maker paid under a 2009 guilty plea for promoting its cyclooxygenase-2-selective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug Bextra (valdecoxib), this is still a tidy sum of cash2.