June 8, 2005
At Pfizer, the Isolation Increases for a Whistle-Blower
By ALEX BERENSON, NY TIMES, June 8, 2005

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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.

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."