Fined $3b: drug giant hid harmful side effects

"Direct medical harm would have been done" ... Professor Jon Jureidini.

DRUG company GlaxoSmithKline will pay US authorities $3 billion for fraudulently promoting drugs for diabetes and mental illness, in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history.

The drug company admitted it had promoted unproven use of an antidepressant, sold as Aropax here and Paxil overseas, for children, and did not disclose research linking it to suicidal thoughts.

Australian researchers played a key role in exposing the illegal marketing of the drug, revealing significant flaws in a research paper used to promote it.

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Aropex ... fraudulently promoted for the treatment of diabetes and mental illness.

The company has also admitted to other such "off-label" marketing, as well as attempting to cover up the increased risk of heart problems linked to its diabetes drug, Avandia.

But the record fine may have little impact on the UK drug behemoth, which had a total turnover last year of $42 billion, according to its annual report.

The head of the department of psychological medicine at the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital, Jon Jureidini, said it was distressing that even such record fines were a ''necessary cost of doing business''.

He and researcher Anne Tonkin outlined the ''distorted and unbalanced'' interpretation of the results of a study of Aropax use in children, published in the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

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Fined $3b: drug giant hid harmful side effects