CROOK ALERT!! Big Pharma Bribes our Doctors and Legislators

4-29-09 Gardiner Harris reports in today's NY Times on the Institute of Medicine's (part of National Science Foundation) scathing report which recommends that doctors and medical schools stop accepting controversial payments gifts and relationships with drug and medical device companies.

The report stated "It is time for medical schools to end a number of long-accepted relationships and practices that create conflicts of interest, threaten the integrity of their missions and their reputations, and put public trust in jeopardy."

The report calls on Congress to pass laws that would make drug and medical device companies publicly disclose all payments made to doctors. Senators Grassley, Republican, and Kohl, Democrat, have co-sponsored a bill that would do just that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/health/policy/29drug.html?scp=3&sq=gardiner%20harris&st=cse

Drug companies spend billions of dollars wooing doctors--more than they spend on research or consumer advertising [all of which contributes to the high cost of health care in the U.S.] Much of this money is spent on giving doctors free samples, free food, free medical refresher courses and payments for marketing lectures [using materials prepared by the drug companies]. The Institute's report recommends that these efforts end.

Last year in a tiny nod designed to appease critics, several big drug companies agreed to stop giving pens, prescription pads, coffee mugs and other small gifts to doctors, but they defended the other practices criticized by the Institute of Medicine report.

Here's a link to the NY Times article

Michigan among 13 states in suit

BY PATRICIA ANSTETT • FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER • February 26, 2009

A New York drug company paid pediatricians consulting fees and treated them to expensive meals and entertainment to get them to prescribe antidepressants to children, a class action charged Wednesday.

The U.S. Justice Department and attorney generals from Michigan and 12 other states plus the District of Columbia filed suit in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts alleging that Forest Laboratories tried to build sales for Celexa and Lexapro by encouraging their use in children.

The drugs only are approved for adults.

Each carries a warning that the drug may cause suicidal thoughts.

Doctors can prescribe adult drugs to children, but the company's actions violate laws that forbid drug companies from paying kickbacks to doctors to encourage their prescription of a drug, the Justice Department said.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said the company failed to tell doctors that some studies have found the drugs are ineffective in children and may have put some kids at risk.

Michigan's Medicaid program paid $3.5 million between 2000 and 2008 for prescriptions of the two drugs to children under age 16.

Cox hopes to get the money back and return it to the program.

A company spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment.

Contact PATRICIA ANSTETT at panstett@freepress.com.

Four out of five U.S. doctors surveyed said they let drug and device makers buy them food and drinks despite recent efforts to tighten ethics rules and avoid conflicts of interest.

The survey also found that family doctors were more likely to meet with industry sales reps, and that cardiologists were more likely to pocket fees than other specialists.

The study is the first to document the extent of the relationships between doctors and sales reps since 2002, when an industry group adopted voluntary guidelines discouraging companies from giving doctors gifts or tickets. In general, researchers found that HARDLY ANYTHING HAD CHANGED since studies a couple of years earlier.

COMMENT: Apparently the pharmaceutical companies are bribing our doctors as well as our legislators!

Here's a link to an article on the study which was conducted by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Yale University and the University of Melbourne in Australia.

[Link to Detroit Free Press article killed.]