. . . but it’s just one more cost of doing business When GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) paid the government a record $3 billion last July in settlement of numerous violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), including concealing data on fatal cardiovascular side effects of their diabetes drug Avandia, it was just business as usual. In fact, Sidney M. Wolfe, MD, of Public Citizen, reports that on the heels of the huge pay-out’s announcement, GSK’s stock price rose to a near 52-week high. Investors knew that even billion-dollar fines are a drop in the bucket compared to the multi billion-dollar profits enjoyed by the drug industry. According to the US Department of Justice, the pharmaceutical industry is the biggest defrauder of the federal government under the FCA, as measured by the size of civil and criminal settlements reached yearly. Consumer advocate organization Public Citizen, which has been tracking fines paid by Big Pharma, found that the amounts of these fines have been escalating…