French court finds Servi­er guilty of manslaugh­ter in di­et pill tri­al, fines phar­ma mil­lions

A French court found phar­ma com­pa­ny Servi­er guilty of de­cep­tion and manslaugh­ter Mon­day in one of the coun­try’s biggest health scan­dals.

The tri­al dealt with Servi­er’s di­a­betes drug Me­di­a­tor, or ben­flu­o­rex, which was pulled from shelves in France back in 2009 af­ter con­cerns it was re­lat­ed to a string of deaths and se­ri­ous side ef­fects. As part of the penal­ties, Servi­er was fined near­ly $3.2 mil­lion and a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive was sen­tenced to four years of a sus­pend­ed prison term, the Guardian re­port­ed.

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