Last week, Dr. Jerome Kassirer of the Tufts University School of Medicine, and author of ''On The Take: How Medicine's Complicity With Big Business Can Endanger Your Health,” had an op-ed piece under the headline above in the Boston Globe.
He wrote about what he called “corruptive influences in medicine.” For example: “The settlement of the $185 million class action lawsuit against Bristol-Myers Squibb announced at the end of January is a lesson in how physicians paid by the pharmaceutical companies as speakers and consultants can be hazardous to your health. While most of the attention of this suit focuses on how company officials defrauded investors by overly flamboyant predictions for the sales of the highly touted ''blockbuster" drug Vanlev, documents prepared for the suit show that behind the scenes, Bristol-Myers Squibb-paid physicians in major medical meetings were shamelessly exaggerating the benefits of the drug for patients with high blood pressure and heart failure and failing to report publicly on substantial numbers of life-threatening drug complications which they knew, from their close relationship to the company, to exist. Fortunately, the FDA saved hypertensive and cardiac patients from ever receiving Vanlev because it knew about the potentially fatal events, determined that they were excessive, and Bristol-Myers Squibb was eventually forced to withdraw its application to market the drug.”
Kassirer concluded: “It's about time that pharmaceutical companies cut back on their massive campaign to influence doctors and to use paid ''experts" to influence other doctors. It's about time physicians, academic medical centers, and professional medical organizations wean themselves away from the deep pockets of companies whose principal goal is not education but marketing.”
Meantime, USA Today last week reported that “at least nine states are considering bills that would require drugmakers to publicly report how much they and their sales representatives give to doctors, hospitals and pharmacists each year. A few proposals go further: A bill under debate in Massachusetts would ban all gifts to medical professionals from the drug industry. … Four states — Vermont, Minnesota, West Virginia and Maine — and the District of Columbia have laws requiring gift reporting by drugmakers. California requires that drugmakers declare they are compliant with federal and industry gift guidelines.”
Posted by schwitz at February 19, 2006 07:52 AM | TrackBack