Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14481

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Publication type: news

Jack A.
GSK to publish level of advisory fees for doctors
Financial Times 2008 Oct 23
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/29ad8ecc-a099-11dd-80a0-000077b07658.html

Full text:

GlaxoSmithKline is to make public the level of advisory fees it offers to doctors and medical academics, and will strictly cap the payments they can receive in the US to $150,000 (£88,000) a year each.

Andrew Witty, chief executive of the UK-based pharmaceutical company, said he was introducing tougher new rules to impose a cap “without exception” on such payments and promised to publish the amounts.

His commitment comes at a time of growing concern that the widespread practice of payments by pharmaceutical companies may help unfairly influence “key opinion leaders” in the medical community, in a way that biases their judgments and recommendations for particular treatments.

GSK has recently been drawn into the debate in the US, after reports that Charles Nemeroff, chairman of the psychiatry department at Emory university in Atlanta, had received nearly $1m in fees from the company during 2000-06, most of which it is claimed he had not disclosed. He has recently stepped down from his post pending the outcome of an internal inquiry.

In Europe, the Dutch Health Inspectorate is investigating concerns about payments from GSK to academics who sit on the Health Council, an advisory body that recommended the use of Cervarix, the company’s recently launched drug to protect against cervical cancer. GSK said it had received “no allegations of misconduct”.

The cases have added support to a proposal from Senator Charles Grassley in the US to introduce “sunshine” legislation designed to require publication of fees paid to doctors, although the fate of his bill remains unclear.

“It’s appropriate that we have a limit on what we pay,” said Mr Witty. “In the past, whatever has happened has happened, but in the future there will be strict adherence to these caps, which will be clearer to everybody.” The company added that the “timing and infrastructure” of publishing details of its payments had yet to be determined.

The US National Institutes of Health, a large funder of academic research, as well as leading academic medical journals, have requirements for disclosure of conflicts of interests through both advisory fees to academics and broader support to their universities and institutions.

However, such disclosures are difficult to police and public registers of payments would make it far easier to identify any discrepancies.

The pharmaceutical industry has taken steps in recent years to limit accusations of influencing doctors, curbing lavish entertainment and luxury travel under the pretext of supporting their attendance at academic conferences. But critics continue to question payments to individual doctors as speakers and advisers to companies, as well as the drug industry’s heavy sponsorship of continuing professional medical education.