Except for the fact that it appears in tonight's online Wall Street Journal, I might have guessed that this story had originally appeared in The Onion(!).
I am presently-sourcing a full-text copy of the below-referenced Committee report, from Senator Kohl's staffers, and should have it online, here, as a link, very shortly. Until then, here is some of Jared A. Favole's fine reporting, on Merck/Schering-Plough markering erh, "education" efforts:
. . . .Schering-Plough and Merck, makers of the controversial cholesterol drug Vytorin, spent roughly $60 million over four years on classes to help doctors learn the latest practices and treatment options for heart disease.
The payments, disclosed in a report released by the Senate Special Committee on Aging, were given to a host of top medical schools such as Harvard University and leading health groups like the American Heart Association. The practice, under review in Congress, raises questions about how pharmaceutical industry money is directed in a way that could influence doctors' prescribing habits. A handful of payments, which spanned January 2004 to January 2008, were over $1 million. . . .George Washington University Medical Office, which received $884,650 from Merck in 2004 and 2005 as part of a "Third Party" continuing medical education initiative. . . . The largest payment by either of the companies was $5,029,723, given from 2004 to 2005 to the "Health Science Center." The entity is a third-party, accredited provider of education services to doctors, and the companies don't have any control over what specific education courses the money is used for, Merck's [spokesperson] said. . . .
R-i-i-i-i-i-ight.
Okay. Except Schering-Plough just wrote something very different, very recently, when it approached a doctor about Saphris Speakers' Bureaus.
Paging Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman. . . . of PharmedOut.org -- I wonder how far she could go -- in establishing brand-independent, high-quality, treatment-advancing CME, if given $60 million, over just four years. . . . I just wonder.
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Belated Hat Tip: Marilyn Mann -- I was already making the top-story graphic, above, apparently, when she alerted me to the story. . . .
5 comments:
I could do some articles.
Salmon
Yeah babey!
Heh!
Namaste
Now of course to be fair to Schmerck the offers of up to $179 K to have physicians discuss or lecture on asenapine may not have technically been been CME. But then how many Docs would have cared if the lunches were worth a few hundred a plate.
Salmon
To follow up on the last comment:
speakers' bureaus are made of docs who are paid by the company to give promotional talks. The audience knows they're getting a marketing show when they attend. These are completely separate from CME activities, where the company gives the money to the CME provider and shouldn't have any input into the content. Docs who speak for company speakers' bureaus may also give CME talks, which should be disclosed, but these are two completely separate types of events. Too much of the press coverage of these issues lumps these together as the same thing.
I'm not saying there aren't abuses of the system, only that it's easy to create an impression of bad behavior that may not be accurate.
Fair enough but then (rhetorically) how do you define a bribe.
Some legal systems define bribes as any sort of undue influence.
Paying 6 figs for giving talks to people who also prescribe or giving free meals to attendees or anything at all including even emotional ego stroking may be considered bribes in certain legal systems.
These activities may be legal under the US system but there are reasons other legal systems consider them illegal.
Consequently they may not be illegal but they may still be bad behavior.
Salmon
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