The unveiling of "Deep Throat" got the headlines this week. But in past weeks and months, whistleblowers in health care have helped blow the cover off of some very troubling practices.
The July issue of PLoS Medicine has an interesting article on "What can we learn from medical whistleblowers?" In it, FDA whistleblower David Graham says, “The pharma–FDA complex has to be dismantled and the American people have to insist on that, otherwise we're going to have disasters like Vioxx that happen in the future.”
Former Pennsylvania investigator Allen Jones describes how he believed that drug companies were acting at the state level to influence the prescribing of psychiatric medications.
“I began to investigate an account into which pharmaceutical companies were paying money that was being accessed by state employees,” he said. “Additionally, I found that various pharmaceutical companies were paying state employees directly—also giving them trips, perks, lavish meals, transportation, honorariums up to $2,000 for speaking in their official capacities at drug company events. They were given unrestricted educational grants that were deposited into an off-the-books account—unregistered, unmonitored, literally operated out of a drawer.”
Jones was fired for talking with journalists.
Read the article and the PLoS editorial about why it sponsored the whistleblower roundtable that was the subject of the article.