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. . . .
