Journalist Ray Moynihan reports on the role of the influential experts paid by industry to help "educate" the profession and the public. Excerpt:
In the world of medicine, "key opinion leader" is the somewhat Orwellian term used to describe the senior doctors who help drug companies sell drugs. These influential doctors are engaged by industry to advise on marketing and help boost sales of new medicines. Across all specialties, in hospitals and universities everywhere, many leading specialists are being paid generous fees to peddle influence on behalf of the world’s biggest drug companies.
Read the article and listen to the video clips with former drug rep Kimberly Elliott.
Moynihan's concluding quote:
David Blumenthal, a Harvard University researcher who has studied the relationships between industry and the profession, says company payments to key opinion leaders, rather than being corrupt, are simply not in the public interest. "I think these are legal relationships between consenting adults who have overlapping interests that are not consistent with the interests of the larger society or necessarily with the patients served by these physicians." Blumenthal is part of a small but growing global chorus, which includes advocacy groups No Free Lunch and Healthy Skepticism, that is calling for a major winding back of industry influence over the medical profession and in particular its education.Posted by schwitz at June 23, 2008 08:35 AM | TrackBack