At Pfizer, the Isolation Increases for a Whistle-Blower

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/business/08rost.html?th & emc=th

 

At Pfizer, the Isolation Increases for a Whistle-Blower

 

 

By ALEX BERENSON

Published: June 8, 2005

 

No man is an island. But Peter Rost is getting close.

 

Dr. Rost, a vice president for marketing at Pfizer with a history of

corporate whistle-blowing, has for the last year publicly criticized

the pharmaceutical industry over the price of drugs. Along the way,

Dr. Rost has become increasingly isolated at Pfizer, the world's

largest drug company.

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Marko Georgiev for The New York Times

 

Dr. Peter Rost, a Pfizer vice president, says drugs are too expensive.

 

First, his employees stopped reporting to him. Then his supervisors

stopped returning his calls and now he does not know whom to report

to. His secretary left, he said, and he was moved to an office near

Pfizer's security department at a company building in Peapack, N.J.

The latest blow came Monday, the morning after Dr. Rost, 46, appeared

on a segment of " 60 Minutes " on CBS about drug prices - a follow-up to

his news conference on the subject last year with members of Congress

and to the opinion pieces he has written for The New York Times and

other newspapers. Ready, as always, to put in a full day at the

office, Dr. Rost turned on his computer Monday and tried for the first

time in almost two weeks to log into his Pfizer e-mail account.

 

Access denied.

 

Because his corporate cellphone also was suddenly not working, Dr.

Rost was reduced to using his Hotmail account to send e-mail messages

to reporters to report his electronic exile.

 

" This is like being in some kind of corporate twilight zone, " Dr. Rost

said in an interview yesterday. " I guess everybody's waiting for me to

get fired. "

 

Paul Fitzgerald, a spokesman for Pfizer, said that the company had not

deliberately disconnected Dr. Rost's e-mail and cellphone service.

" There have been cases, through a change of vendor, where some

employees have lost service for a period of time, " Mr. Fitzgerald said.

 

Beyond that, Mr. Fitzgerald said that he could not comment on Dr.

Rost's work at Pfizer.

 

But he said that Pfizer had not changed Dr. Rost's responsibilities

since April 2003, when Pfizer bought Pharmacia & Upjohn, where Dr.

Rost formerly worked. At the time of that acquisition, Dr. Rost

supervised Pharmacia's marketing of a growth hormone called genotropin.

 

Mr. Fitzgerald characterized Dr. Rost's new office as nice, a

description Dr. Rost did not dispute.

 

" He does still work at Pfizer, " Mr. Fitzgerald said. " We continue to

employ him. " By yesterday afternoon, after a reporter's inquiries with

the company, Dr. Rost reported that his e-mail account was working again.

 

" Now I'm going to check if I can actually get in and get the name of

my supervisor, " he wrote in an e-mail message. " That should be fun. "

 

Dr. Rost first received public attention last August, after his

positive review of a book critical of the drug industry appeared on

Amazon.com. The next month, in his news conference, he called for

passage of legislation to allow imports of low-priced drugs from other

countries.

 

" Every day we delay, Americans die because they cannot afford

life-saving drugs, " he said.

 

Pfizer responded at the time by saying that " Dr. Rost has no

qualifications to speak on importation. "

 

Management specialists said that Pfizer and Dr. Rost had

irreconcilable differences and called for a speedy divorce.

 

" In defense of Pfizer, I don't think I would want him representing me

in the marketplace, " said John Putzier, president of FirStep, a human

resources consulting firm based in Prospect, Pa.

 

Dr. Rost's comments are not in Pfizer's interests, Mr. Putzier said.

As a result, it may be legal for Pfizer to fire him. But a firing

might make Pfizer appear vindictive or give him more publicity, Mr.

Putzier said.

 

Dr. Rost may have additional protection against being fired. In its

most recent annual report, Pfizer disclosed that the Justice

Department had opened an investigation into its marketing of

genotropin, the growth hormone Dr. Rost was responsible for selling at

Pharmacia.

 

Dr. Rost said he could not confirm or deny whether he was involved in

that investigation. But if he is, he may be protected by federal laws

shielding whistle-blowers from retaliation.

 

Mr. Fitzgerald, the Pfizer spokesman, declined to comment on the

investigation. Pfizer is " really between a rock and a hard place, "

said Mr. Putzier, the consultant. " He's a loose cannon, but he's a

strategic loose cannon. "

 

Pfizer became Dr. Rost's employer when it bought Pharmacia in 2002 for

$63 billion. Dr. Rost had worked at Wyeth, another drug maker, until

2001 - the year he sued Wyeth in New Jersey state court, contending

that the company had retaliated against him after he uncovered its

practice of underpaying taxes to foreign governments. Dr. Rost and

Wyeth settled the suit in December 2003; terms were not disclosed.

 

Susan L. Annunzio, chief executive of the Hudson Highland Center for

High Performance, a management consulting firm in Chicago, said Pfizer

had evidently decided that firing Dr. Rost would cause more problems

than it would solve.

 

" Companies are in a dilemma, " she said, " because they don't want bad

publicity, and they want to get the person to leave on his own. "

 

Dr. Rost said that he did not enjoy being unable to work productively,

but that he could not quit without another job to replace his current

annual compensation of more than $600,000. " I have a family to support.

There haven't been that many job offers coming through lately. "

 

" I'm about to reach my four-year anniversary, " Dr. Rost said. " In

another year, I'll be fully vested in the pension plan. "