Peter Rost (doctor)

Peter Rost is an American former drug marketing executive who is most known for taking public stances critical of the pharmaceutical industry as an "insider" and whistleblower.

At Wyeth, he uncovered tax evasion practices, and after informing senior company executives, was transferred from Sweden to a post in New Jersey.

[4] Rost left Wyeth for Pharmacia in June 2001 and took a role leading its endocrinology division, and said that he soon began to be concerned from a business perspective about sales of Genotropin, Pfizer's human growth hormone drug, which had plateaued; Pharmacia's decision to pour money into off-label marketing to adults was not paying off, due to the low doses that adults took.

In the next year, Rost became aware that the strategy was not only unwise, but was probably illegal, and began raising objections internally to try to get the company to change course.

[2] In August 2004, Rost posted a glowing review of Marcia Angell's book, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It on amazon.com.

[7] The public spotlight from the USA Today article "changed Rost's life" and launched his new career as an insider critical of the drug industry.

"[12] In September 2006, Rost's book, The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman, was published, which described his tenure at Pharmacia and Pfizer and his efforts to deal with the marketing of Genotropin.

[8] In August 2007, Rost started to write a daily blog for BrandweekNRX[13] and a column for Realtid,[14] a Swedish online business newspaper.

[18] Unbeknownst to Rost, Pfizer had already disclosed the off-label marketing effort at Pharmacia to the Department of Justice and fired the responsible parties.

[5] The judge presiding over Rost's wrongful termination lawsuit ruled that the evidence showed Pfizer's version of events to be correct.

[20] On April 2, 2007, Pfizer and the Department of Justice, which had been conducting its own investigations focused on kickbacks and illegal off-label marketing (not fraud), announced that two Pharmacia subsidiaries had pleaded guilty and agreed to pay at total of $34.7 million in civil and criminal penalties for kickbacks and illegally promoting its human growth hormone drug, Genotropin.