Now for a practical look at innovation in action - watch the innovation from Turnbull's ministry before he rolled Tony Abbott.

This is the innovation - instead of a written annual report published online, Chairman Mal's secretary here introduces the video camera which is used to record a video fillum.   That video fillum was then uploaded to an innovation called Youtube where instead of being able to turn to the page you want in the Annual Report, you can watch and listen to the video fillum where the Chairman's guy craps on and on and on.

And the verdict on the innovation?   Since October last year, 527 Australians have smashed Youtube to catch the Innovation Flame.

Thanks so much to Stu of NT for those classic IBM ads.   Anyone know a good bespoke tailor, Malcolm needs some clothes.

PS - Malcolm, you've been around the white-shoe brigade for long enough to understand the cash and credibility burn rates associated with big ideas businesses.   That you still promote the idea that if you say innovation enough somehow things will happen is bad enough.   But that you infect others like young Wyatt Roy with your expensive makebelieve in lieu of doing things is unforgivable.

Michael Smith,  National Australia Bank

BSB: 084855 

Acct No: 537650476

I can only apologise for the quality of the line to Charles - we'll speak again soon when I'm in a better connected part of the world!

Charles Ortel is US economist, banker and CEO - he's a regular commentator on economics for US media and you can read more about Charles here.

More than two decades ago a man who reported to me came to my office after more than a week's unexplained absence from work.

Nothing I'd experienced prepared me for what he said.

"I'm gay and my partner is dying from AIDS."   

We went for a walk and he told me barely a week had gone by in the past year without a funeral for a friend.

His partner died soon after our chat.   Back then when a doctor delivered the news you were HIV positive it meant an early and grisly death from a horrible disease - with no cure and limited palliative care.

Australia tried to fight back with this commercial which seemed to play endlessly during A Country Practice and the news.   

That ad seems so ancient and out of place today because it is.   Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment changed the diagnosis from a terminal to a treatable condition   The reduced amount of virus in the blood of people on ARV treatment also reduces the probability of onward transmission.   These data are from the Kirby Institute:

Of the estimated 23,800 (88%) people with HIV in Australia who were aware of their HIV-positive status at end of 2014, an estimated 17,470 (73%) were receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. 92% of people accessing ARV treatment were estimated to have an undetectable viral load.

These figures compare well to the UN '90-90-90' targets i.e., that by 2020, 90% of people living with HIV know their status, 90% of people diagnosed with HIV are on treatment, and 90% of people on treatment have suppressed viral loads.

I have such a strong memory of the sense of despair in my office as I spoke with my friend and colleague all those years ago.

Imagine how different his life would have been if ARV treatment was available back then.

Now imagine that it was.   Imagine he and his partner were told about the benefits of the treatment and were given a script for the drugs.   Imagine their discipline in taking the daily dose of tablets, precisely as prescribed and typed out on the pharmacist's label.

And imagine the dread as the disease continued to progress, dementia, ulcers, internal bleeding awful pain, unchecked by the wonder drugs.

You don't have to imagine the next bit, because as I'll show you in court documents and various reports from the time - this next bit is history, the truth, it happened and we in Australia are a party to it.

The horrible reality is that for many patients in the developing world, patients who had the misfortune to come into contact with the Clinton Foundation and its various dodgy sub-entities, the drugs in the packet weren't what the doctor ordered at all.  

God alone knows how many patients have taken tablets made by the profiteering friends of the Clintons at Ranbaxy.    Never heard of Ranbaxy?   Julie Bishop's department has.   Ranbaxy was convicted in 2013 of widespread manufacturing of useless, pretend medicines that were sold as the real thing.  Many of them in deals put together by Clinton and friends.

Because of Australia's dodgy deals with the dodgy Clintons, Australian taxpayer money has been spent buying dodgy drugs from dodgy Ranbaxy - drugs which were given to patients in Papua New Guinea.

Ranbaxy's frauds have been widely known, certainly to the World Health Organisation since 2004.

Here is the final US Justice Department's finding against Ranbaxy:

In the largest drug safety settlement to date with a generic drug manufacturer, Ranbaxy USA Inc. , a subsidiary of Indian generic pharmaceutical manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, pleaded guilty today to felony charges relating to the manufacture and distribution of certain adulterated drugs made at two of Ranbaxy’s manufacturing facilities in India, the Justice Department announced today. Ranbaxy also agreed to pay a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $150 million and to settle civil claims under the False Claims Act and related State laws for $350 million.

The federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) prohibits the introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any drug that is adulterated. Under the FDCA, a drug is adulterated if the methods used in, or the facilities or controls used for, its manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding do not conform to, or are not operated or administered in conformity with, current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) regulations. This assures that a drug meets the requirements as to safety and has the identity and strength, and meets the quality and purity characteristics, which the drug purports or is represented to possess.

Ranbaxy USA pleaded guilty to three felony FDCA counts, and four felony counts of knowingly making material false statements to the FDA. The generic drugs at issue were manufactured at Ranbaxy’s facilities in Paonta Sahib and Dewas, India. Under the plea agreement, the company will pay a criminal fine of $130 million, and forfeit an additional $20 million.

“When companies sell adulterated drugs, they undermine the integrity of the FDA’s approval process and may cause patients to take drugs that are substandard, ineffective, or unsafe,” said Stuart F. Delery, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.  “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to ensure that all manufacturers of drugs approved by the FDA for sale in the United States, both domestic and foreign, follow the FDA guidelines that protect all of us.”

“This is the largest false claims case ever prosecuted in the District of Maryland, and the nation’s largest financial penalty paid by a generic pharmaceutical company for FDCA violations,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.  “The joint criminal and civil settlement, which reflects many years of work by FDA agents and federal prosecutors, holds Ranbaxy accountable for a pattern of violations and should improve the reliability of generic drugs manufactured in India by Ranbaxy.”

Ranbaxy USA admitted to introducing into interstate commerce certain batches of adulterated drugs that were produced at Paonta Sahib in 2005 and 2006, including Sotret, gabapentin, and ciprofloxacin. Sotret is Ranbaxy’s branded generic form of isotretinoin, a drug used to treat severe recalcitrant nodular acne; gabapentin is a drug used to treat epilepsy and nerve pain; ciprofloxacin is a broad-spectrum antibiotic. In a Statement of Facts filed along with the Information, Ranbaxy USA acknowledged that FDA’s inspection of the Paonta Sahib facility in 2006 found incomplete testing records and an inadequate program to assess the stability characteristics of drugs. “Stability” refers to how the quality of a drug varies with time under the influence of a variety of factors, such as temperature, humidity, and light.  Such testing is used to determine appropriate storage conditions and expiration dates for the drug, as well as to detect any impurities in the drug. 

Ranbaxy also acknowledged that the FDA’s 2006 and 2008 inspections of the Dewas facility found the same issues with incomplete testing records and an inadequate stability program, as well as significant cGMP deviations in the manufacture of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished products. Ranbaxy USA also acknowledged that in 2003 and 2005 the company was informed of cGMP violations by consultants it hired to conduct audits at the Paonta Sahib and Dewas facilities. Those cGMP violations resulted in the introduction into interstate commerce of some adulterated drugs.

Ranbaxy USA further admitted to failing to timely file required reports known to FDA as “field alerts” for batches of Sotret and gabapentin that had failed certain tests. With respect to Sotret, Ranbaxy USA was aware in January 2003 that a batch of Sotret failed an accelerated dissolution stability test but continued to distribute the batch into the United States for another 13 months. With respect to gabapentin, Ranbaxy USA was aware at various times between June and August 2007 that certain batches of gabapentin were testing out-of-specification, had unknown impurities, and would not maintain their expected shelf life. Nevertheless, Ranbaxy USA did not notify FDA and institute a voluntary recall until October 2007.

Ranbaxy USA also admitted to making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements to the FDA in Annual Reports filed in 2006 and 2007 regarding the dates of stability tests conducted on certain batches of Cefaclor, Cefadroxil, Amoxicillin, and Amoxicillin and Clavulanate Potassium, which were manufactured at the Dewas facility. Ranbaxy USA was found to have conducted stability testing of certain batches of these drugs weeks or months after the dates reported to FDA. In addition, instead of conducting some of the stability tests at prescribed intervals months apart, the tests were conducted on the same day or within a few days of each other. This practice resulted in unreliable test results regarding the shelf life of the drugs. Ranbaxy USA also acknowledged that drug samples waiting to be tested were stored for unknown periods of time in a refrigerator, which did not meet specified temperature and humidity ranges for an approved stability chamber, and that this was not disclosed to the FDA.

The criminal case is U.S. v. Ranbaxy USA, Inc., JFM-13-CR-0238 (D. Md.).

Under the civil settlement, Ranbaxy has agreed to pay an additional $350 million to resolve allegations that it caused false claims to be submitted to government health care programs between April 1, 2003, and September 16, 2010, for certain drugs manufactured at the Paonta Sahib and Dewas facilities. The United States contends that Ranbaxy manufactured, distributed, and sold drugs whose strength, purity, or quality differed from the drug’s specifications or that were not manufactured according to the FDA-approved formulation. The United States further contends that, as a result, Ranbaxy knowingly caused false claims for those drugs to be submitted to Medicaid, Medicare, TRICARE, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which administers the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The federal government’s share of the civil settlement amount is approximately $231.8 million, and the remaining $118.2 million will go to the states participating in the agreement.

The civil settlement resolves a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act, which allow private citizens to bring civil actions on behalf of the United States and share in any recovery. As part of today’s resolution, the whistleblower, Dinesh Thakur, a former Ranbaxy executive, will receive approximately $48.6 million from the federal share of the settlement amount. The case is U.S. ex rel. Thakur v. Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, Case No. JFM-07-962 (D. Md.).

With the exception of the allegations to which Ranbaxy pleaded guilty in the Criminal Information, there has been no determination of liability as to the claims settled by the civil agreement.

Last year, FDA and Ranbaxy agreed to an injunction that prevents drugs produced at the Paonta Sahib and Dewas facilities from entering the U.S. market until the facilities have been brought into full compliance with the FDCA and its implementing regulations. Since September 16, 2008, when the FDA placed drugs from those facilities on an Import Alert, Ranbaxy has not imported drugs from those facilities into the U.S. In addition, the injunction requires Ranbaxy to review and verify data contained in Ranbaxy’s past drug applications to the FDA. United States v. Ranbaxy Laboratories, Ltd., et al. , Case No. JFM-12-250 (D. Md).

“The FDA expects that companies will comply with the cGMP requirements mandated by law so that consumers can be assured that their medical products are safe and pure,” said John Roth, director of the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations. “The investigation that led to this settlement uncovered evidence showing that certain lots of specific drugs produced at the Paonta Sahib facility were defective, in that their strength differed from, or their purity or quality fell below, that which they purported to possess. The FDA and its law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively pursue companies and their executives who erode public confidence in the quality and safety of medical products by distributing products that do not comply with the law.” 

“I would like to express my appreciation for the exceptional work of our investigators and that of their FDA and Department of Justice partners,” said Michael G. Carroll, USAID Deputy Inspector General. “This settlement represents the culmination of years of investigative effort and signals our continuing commitment to the integrity of U.S. government systems and our determination to hold those who seek to defraud or mislead to account.”

The criminal case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland and the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch. The civil settlement was negotiated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland and the Civil Division’s Commercial Litigation Branch. The case was investigated by agents from the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations and USAID’s Office of Inspector General. The FDA’s Office of Chief Counsel, HHS Office of Counsel to the Inspector General, Office of the General Counsel-CMS Division, and the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Control Units also provided assistance.

This criminal and civil resolution is part of the government’s emphasis on combating health care fraud and another step for the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) initiative, which was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in May 2009. The partnership between the two departments has focused efforts to reduce and prevent Medicare and Medicaid financial fraud through enhanced cooperation. One of the most powerful tools in that effort is the False Claims Act, which the Justice Department has used to recover more than $10.3 billion since January 2009 in cases involving fraud against federal health care programs. The Justice Department’s total recoveries in False Claims Act cases since January 2009 are over $14.3 billion.

Related Materials:

Ranbaxy Settlement
Information
Attachment A
Attachment B
Attachment C

ENDS

This is awful to read, it's awful to write and it's hard to believe - but in 2013, Clinton did this in a paid speech in India that Clinton was apparently surprised to see reported in the Indian press.

Look at this photo

ENDS

The World Health Organisation had pinged Ranbaxy in 2004 for its dodgy drugs.   This superb piece of reporting in Fortune Magazine tells the appalling tale of Ranbaxy, a company whose culture permitted an executive to reportedly say:

“Who cares? It’s just blacks dying.” 

 
• Katherine Eban

 

What's with the weird set of the jaw Chairman?

Maybe he's developed a phobic belief he has a bit of spinach stuck in his teeth.

Or does he think it hides his absence of achievement?

Mal, whoever you've been paying for the weird mouth lessons, get your money back mate.  If this is what you're after

....you've either got it or you don't.

PS - you look a fair bit silly.

Firstly your advice.  Does it bother you that:

• Australia's DFAT paid for dodgy AIDS drugs produced by an Indian company called Ranbaxy - drugs that didn't work
• Ranbaxy was selected and promoted by Bill Clinton's dodgy deregistered incorporated entity called the Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative Inc (CHAI)
• That entity was deregistered (news that we brought to you exclusively here on this website after I contacted the US Regulatory authorities) for failing to file returns for 2 years running
• When that CHAI entity was busted known associates of Clinton set up another CHAI this time called the Clinton Health Access Iniative
• Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs signed an MOU with Bill Clinton under which we agreed to pay The Clinton Foundation $25M++ for it to spend in New Guinea when Clinton was a disbarred lawyer and not a fit and proper person in the US to be associated with a charity

If so would you let me know?

Secondly I am confident in my researching abilities but my journalist friends tell me I still write like a copper.  This story is so important to me that I don't want to bugger it up by writing about it poorly.

So are you a good writer?   Would you please peruse these materials and get back to me on [email protected] with the story you would write (ideally the headline too) and let's see where this takes us.  I can't offer you money but I can guarantee you prominence if you're up to writing about this catastrophic failure of governance on our part and criminal negligence on Clinton's.

UNCLASSIFIED

Michael,

The following may be attributed to a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“Prior to 2013, a small amount of Australian aid money was expended on Ranbaxy pharmaceutical products in Papua New Guinea to support the PNG Government’s health programs.”

Kind regards

Media Liaison Officer

ENDS

That was in response to this email I sent to Julie Bishop's department

Who cares?   It's just blacks dying.

That unspeakable quote is attributed to a Ranbaxy Laboratories executive in this Fortune Magazine article Dirty medicine

REQUEST

Can DFAT confirm whether or not Australian Government aid money was used to finance the purchase of pharmaceuticals from Ranbaxy?

BACKGROUND

In 2002 Clinton starts dealing with RANBAXY generic medicine manufacturer in India.

This Fortune article tells the story of how long Ranbaxy was making dodgy drugs that didn't work.   http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/dirty-medicine/

This US Justice Department announcement shows the criminal prosecution and $500M+ sanctions against RANBAXY.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/generic-drug-manufacturer-ranbaxy-pleads-guilty-and-agrees-pay-500-million-resolve-false

Ranbaxy Settlement
Information
Attachment A
Attachment B
Attachment C

This DFAT evaluation of the Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative Inc in Papua New Guinea shows CHAI was responsible for supply chain management of ARV (anti retro viral) drugs in PNG.   It also scores CHAIV 2 (below 4 is unsatisfactory) on monitoring and evaluation.   But we paid anyway.

http://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Documents/hiv-chai-evaluation-report.pdf

Tim Wilson warned in this paper about the dangers of supporting generic medicines

Despite the rhetoric of NGOs, the real challenges fac- ing access to essential medicines are not due to excessive protection of patents. IP protection plays a vital role in promoting innovation in public health. Undermining patents can actually have a detrimental effect on develop- ing HIV/AIDS medicines for the world’s poor. Moreover, weak property protections undermine the investment cli- mate needed to promote the economic growth to fund the infrastructure to bridge the gap between medicines and their patients.

Enforcement of patent protections also combats the development and use of counterfeit medicines. These counterfeits pose immediate health risks. And they can breed and accelerate resistance to patented and generic medicines. This acceleration of resistance boosts the sub- sequent costs of HIV/AIDS treatment. 

Attachments area

Preview attachment IPABackgrounder19-2.pdf

IPABackgrounder19-2.pdf

Thank you as always Rachel.

Regards,

Michael Smith

Last night Ralph Blewitt saw this after-action report of one of his first contacts with the enemy a few days after he arrived in South Vietnam in 1967.

It was the first time in his life he'd seen the document and it triggered memories of that day - and a lot more.

Here's Part Two of our conversation.

And Part Three

Last word from Ralph - some news for his co-conspirators in The AWU Scandal

Western ignorance is contributing towards terrorism by stripping proud people of their principles. @JulianBurnside pic.twitter.com/6FUlpIX7EY

— Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick) March 28, 2016