Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16588
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
Keep doctors independent; ban fees from drug makers
The Boston Globe 2009 Oct 1
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/10/01/keep_doctors_independent_ban_fees_from_drug_makers/
Full text:
WHEN DOCTORS promote drugs in exchange for pay from pharmaceutical companies, they cease to be independent evaluators of the risks posed by those drugs, and they cease to be unbiased caregivers for their patients. Hospitals should prohibit doctors from taking part in so-called speakers bureaus, whereby companies compensate them for giving talks to colleagues about new drugs. Legislators should go beyond requiring disclosure of the relationships, and ban the practice.
In the first three months of this year, Eli Lilly & Co., the global pharmaceutical giant, paid at least 60 doctors in Massachusetts a total of more than $580,000 to give speeches about its drugs. Company officials told the Globe that Eli Lilly provides the content that doctors deliver to colleagues about the medications. Certain doctors at Boston Medical Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center each earned tens of thousands of dollars in fees for such talks from Eli Lilly.
The company’s voluntary disclosure is only the tip of the iceberg; other pharmaceutical companies also dole out millions of dollars in fees to doctors. By some estimates, 1 in 6 doctors in the country take speakers’ fees from drug companies.
The danger posed by this practice is serious: Research shows that getting money from the pharmaceutical industry can cloud doctors’ judgment when evaluating studies and side effects, as well as when they are prescribing medication. In addition, when reputed doctors rely on company material to promote a new drug to their colleagues, they also help broaden its use. Sometimes, the presentations end up encouraging the use of a drug for purposes beyond what it has been approved for by the Food and Drug Administration.
Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and McLean Hospital – all of which also employ doctors who have received money from Eli Lilly this year – will prohibit their doctors from receiving speakers’ fees from the pharmaceutical industry starting today. Other hospitals in Massachusetts and around the country should follow their lead immediately.
The state, which as of next summer will require drug companies to disclose their speakers and the amounts they are paid, should not stop with transparency. Neither should Congress when it considers a Senate bill that would require such disclosure nationwide. While transparency is a good first step that exposes doctors’ financial relationships to the broader medical community, it is unlikely to affect how patients view their doctors. More important, it will not address the subtle ways the payments influence and interfere with patient care.
Patients trust doctors as stewards of their health. They revere them as scientists who can exercise sound, independent judgment. Allowing doctors to promote drugs for pharmaceutical companies takes advantage of that trust and reverence. It also compromises doctors’ most important work: treating people who are ill.
