Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16483
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Moore J
Drug company paid MN doctors $754,127
The Star Tribune 2009 Sep 8
http://web.archive.org/web/20100816053027/http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/56788977.html
Abstract:
Forest Laboratories paid 62 Minnesota doctors in 2008, a nonprofit group reports.
Full text:
Minnesota doctors were paid thousands of dollars in speaker fees and other payments last year by a pharmaceutical company now implicated in a congressional investigation for its aggressive promotion of a popular antidepression drug, according to documents filed with the state and analyzed by a nonprofit group.
Forest Laboratories Inc. paid 62 Minnesota doctors at least $1,000 each in speakers’ fees, with 28 physicians receiving payments of more than $10,000, according to The Pew Prescription Project. All told, Forest paid Minnesota practitioners more than $750,000 in 2008.
Minnesota was the first among a handful of states requiring drug companies to disclose payments to doctors, and the annual disclosure reports have repeatedly revealed potential conflicts of interest in the way physicians prescribe drugs or conduct clinical research, while adding fuel to a national debate about greater disclosure of the financial ties between industry and doctors.
“The analysis tells us that a lot of doctors in Minnesota have become extensions of Forest’s marketing campaign,” said Allan Coukell, director of The Pew Prescription Project.
The group’s analysis found that 32 percent of Forest’s payments went to psychiatrists and neurologists, frequent prescribers of antidepressants.
A report released by congressional investigators Tuesday highlighted how Forest marketed Lexapro, a depression drug that reaped $2.3 billion for the New York-based company last year.
A $100 million “marketing plan” hatched by Forest in 2004 hints at the way some pharmaceutical companies encourage doctors to prescribe their brands, even if they are more expensive than others or if a generic version is available.
Those practices include paying “key opinion leaders” in certain clinical fields, such as psychiatry, to make speeches on Lexapro’s behalf using slides provided by the company, authoring bylined articles for doctors about the drug, and funding their continuing medical education classes.
