How Big Pharma Intentionally Misleads Patients About the Efficacy of Their Products

The key to being a good salesperson is being a good listener. As it turns out, the same skill applies to being a whistleblower.

I’ve always known how to listen, but I prefer to do the talking. A neurologist I worked with once told me I was the Joan Rivers of pharmaceutical sales. I’d sit in the doctors’ offices and ask, “Can we talk?” And then we’d end up chatting about Philly sports teams or celebrity gossip. By the time I got around to making the case for them to prescribe my medication, they’d already been sold on me, so the rest was easy.

I loved my job for many years—but by the time a former colleague asked if I would become a whistleblower against our employer, Questcor Pharmaceuticals, I no longer did. Still, I had to consider what it would mean to go to the US Department of Justice with what I knew. And with my work schedule, I didn’t have lots of time to consider something that could potentially turn my life upside down. That night, just hours after my colleague confronted me, Questcor was hosting one of their white-coat marketing extravaganzas, otherwise known as “patient programs.” They were helpful information sessions over a free dinner. To clarify, they helped Questcor—not the patients.

The Italian restaurant sat right off the highway in Freehold, New Jersey. I’d been in and out of so many restaurants during my career in pharma sales that they mostly blended together. But this was one place I’d never forget. The dinner haunts me to this day.

My role for the evening was hostess. “Welcome, I’m Lisa Pratta, the specialist from Questcor.” That’s what salespeople are called in my field: specialists. I helped a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair find a spot at one of the tables. She was accompanied by a health-care aide. Many of the guests arrived with an aide or caregiver. Multiple sclerosis is a crippling disease that attacks the central nervous system, the part of our bodies responsible for our mobility, our speech, and our vision. Basically, everything we do. The drug I promoted to doctors, Acthar, was indicated to relieve flare-ups of the disease and bring people back to where they were before the attack. The goal of the patient dinner was to educate them about the drug.

Patient programs are a lot of work and expense compared to, say, running a television ad. That’s why companies, particularly in the biotech industry, use them only for specialized drugs. For these medications, it simply doesn’t pay to run standard ads because the drugs cater to a very small patient population. Running an ad on television casts too wide a net. How many people watching any given television show happen to have multiple sclerosis? Considering that the MS population in the entire United States is maybe a million people (compared to the nearly seven million who suffer from Alzheimer’s), the chances are not high enough. So somewhere along the line, a pharma exec had the idea to get them all into a room.

During the patient programs, I was forbidden from answering questions or offering advice. That was left to our guest speakers, a multiple sclerosis “patient advocate” and a neurologist—both paid by Questcor. For the next two hours, the speakers would tell the assembled group of patients that the neurological drug Acthar would change their lives. It reminded me of the TV shows I used to see as a kid where a preacher would lay hands and proclaim that the blind would now see. But this was worse, because the sad truth was that if prescribed correctly, Acthar could help the blind see. And help people walk again. And talk again.

If prescribed correctly.

Questcor made more money when it was prescribed incorrectly.

*

After the forty or so patient attendees were settled at their tables, the first speaker of the evening stood in front of the room. Eileen Schick, a tall brunette in her forties, had been a nurse at one time but stopped working when multiple sclerosis made her job impossible. Now, she traveled around the country talking to patients about treatment options. She was what was known as an “MS advocate.” There were only about five in the entire country. She lived two hours away in the Poconos, and Questcor sent a limo for her. They also trained her in what to say about the medication Acthar, and how to say it. I never knew exactly how much she was paid, but I’m sure the company made it worth her while.

Patient programs were nothing new. The pharmaceutical industry started using them in the 1990s. It works like this: A company invites a few dozen patients with a specific disease (in our case, multiple sclerosis) to a restaurant where they’re served dinner. Meanwhile, speakers tell them how great a specific drug is and why they should ask their doctors to prescribe it. By the time the evening was finished, if the paid speakers did their job right, patients weren’t just requesting the drug—they were demanding it.

These dinners had become the most difficult part of my job. Ironically, it was the part of my job that required the least amount of actual work on my part. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut. But after the conversation I’d had that afternoon with my friend, keeping my mouth shut had just become more complicated.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my friend hadn’t come to talk to me that day. Or, if when he’d asked me to be a whistleblower, I’d just given him a firm no and forgotten all about it. That wasn’t an unreasonable thought. After all, I had a lot to lose. I’d worked my entire career in pharmaceutical sales, and I was a single mother to a special-needs son. Getting fired, and possibly being blackballed in my industry and having no way to support my son, meant I could lose custody.

But once I knew that it might be possible to stop Questcor from continuing to harm these people, I couldn’t say no. Not without giving it serious consideration.

*

I was born to help people who couldn’t help themselves. When I was growing up in Pitman, New Jersey, in the 1960s, kids were pretty much left to fend for themselves. And it would have been fine—except my father happened to be an abusive psychopath.

As the oldest of three—I had a younger brother and sister—I somehow got the worst of it. I suspect that my father, Archibald Harrison Johnson Murphy, was schizophrenic, but he was never diagnosed and certainly never treated. He’d write prophesies on the wall, tell me he was Jesus, and then make me clean up the wall. I wasn’t allowed to date because I was his “property.” One time, he caught me coming home from a date and confronted us with a BB gun.

From the time I was in elementary school, I knew I had to get out of that house and that good grades were my ticket. My parents told me I’d never get anywhere in life, but I earned a scholarship to Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. I got a great education, and it was a nurturing environment. It saved me.

I majored in biology, Spanish, and German, planning to go to med school. But when graduation rolled around, I couldn’t afford to spend any more time in school. I needed to start making money. My academic adviser knew that I didn’t have financial resources or a supportive family life, and suggested that with my interest in the sciences, I could make a decent living in pharmaceutical sales. I wonder, if my adviser had known then what I know now about the pharma industry, would he still have made the recommendation?

*

Our speaker, Eileen, paced in front of the room, trailing the mic cord behind her. She was dressed in a conservative suit and low heels and in her soothing but authoritative voice reminded me of a flight attendant delivering in-flight instructions.

“I remember lying in bed wondering if I’d ever be able to drive my children to nursery school again,” Eileen said. Sympathetic murmurs filled the room. “I had optic neuritis and could only see out of one eye. The original medication I was on had such bad side effects, it made me feel almost worse than the MS. But then my doctor prescribed Acthar. It literally changed my life. Acthar is the reason I’m able to stand in front of you tonight.”

As with all great lies, there was some truth to what she was saying. Acthar could help people suffering from multiple sclerosis relapses—what was called an “MS flare.” If a patient lost mobility during a flare, taking Acthar for two to three weeks could restore their mobility, or their eyesight, or their speech. The goal of the medication was to get them to “baseline,” the condition they were in before the attack. But it would not work for patients suffering from advanced MS. And from what I was seeing in that room, a quarter of our guests probably fell into that category.

When Eileen finished her speech, I walked to the front of the room. Looking out at a sea of suffering, hopeful eyes searching for the golden ticket that would make their lives livable, I introduced the keynote speaker.

“Please welcome our next guest, neurologist Dr. Claire Beaufoy. Dr. Beaufoy is a professor and…” And she was on Questcor’s payroll. But I didn’t mention that.

Dr. Beaufoy was a recurring player in these programs. I privately thought of her as the “the Duchess.” She came from a very wealthy family with homes in the UK and the south of France. She dressed every inch the part, with expensive, understated jewelry and a seemingly endless supply of Hermès scarves. She had chestnut-brown hair and blue eyes. We didn’t speak very much because she always arrived at the programs exactly on time and left the second they were over.

Beaufoy continued, “Using Acthar for five days puts you back in control of your life. And best of all, it will cost you absolutely nothing out of pocket…”

I sat close to the front. One of the patients at my table was a beautiful, young woman with long red hair and hazel eyes. I’d noticed her walk in using a cane. As Dr. Beaufoy spoke, I felt like the woman was watching me, almost as if she was studying my reaction to the claims the doctor made about Acthar.

It suddenly felt extremely warm in there. A sense of claustrophobia hit me—not something I usually experienced. I excused myself and headed toward the back of the room. A doorway led to a hall where there were restrooms. I went inside and ran the water, looking at myself in the mirror. What was I going to do?

A decision had to be made. I should go to the Feds. But every time I leaned toward calling my former coworker to tell him, Okay, I’m in, I thought about my thirteen-year-old son, Marco. Ironically, he was dependent on medication to function as a healthy boy. I needed my job and my health insurance for that.

With my stomach in knots, I walked back into the corridor and headed to the dining room.

“Lisa?”

I turned around. The redheaded woman with the cane was waiting for me.

“Yes?”

“My name’s Melanie. One of my friends told me about this program, and I wasn’t sure, but here I am.” She gave a hesitant smile. “I was just wondering: Will this drug really help me? I have MS and I have two little babies at home and I was just diagnosed with lymphoma so I want to know, is this real? Can it help me care for my children for whatever time I have with them?” She looked at me with wide, nearly unblinking hazel eyes.

“I’m not allowed to provide you with any medical advice. I’m sorry, but you’ll need to speak with your personal neurologist about that.”

I walked back to the program, my hands shaking.

And in that moment, I knew my days of keeping my mouth shut were over.

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Excerpted from False Claims: One Insider’s Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption by Lisa Pratta. Copyright 2025, Lisa Pratta. Published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.