Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17450

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: Electronic Source

Silverman E
Harvard’s Biederman: What J&J Money?
Pharmalot 2008 Nov 26
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/11/harvards-biederman-what-jj-money/

Full text:

Earlier this week, we learned that reknowned Harvard University psychiatrist Joseph Biederman pushed Johnson & Johnson to fund a research center at Massachusetts General Hospital that would focus on the use of its Risperdal antipsychotic in children, well before the med was approved for pediatric use (back story).
Seeking to curry favor with the influential doc, Biederman was put in charge of the institute. He also began a study of 40 children between 4 and 6 years old who were given Risperdal and Lilly’s Zyprexa, another antipsychotic. At the time, Harvard University and MGH rules forbid researchers from running trials with drugmakers if they receive more than $10,000 from a company that makes the drug.
However, info provided to the US Senate Finance Committee, which has been investigating Biederman and other academic researchers for allegedly violating federal conflict of rules governing disclosure of industry fees and NIH grants, indicates Biederman in 2001 received $58,169 from Johnson & Johnson and $14,339 from Lilly. But the payments were not fully disclosed, according to the committee (see this letter).
The study ran for three years and, in 2003, Biederman received another $18,347 from Lilly, which also wasn’t properly disclosed, according to the committee. In other words, Biederman appears to have consistently flouted Harvard rules about disclosure. Moreover, he also failed to disclose his financial ties to the drugmakers when the study was later published in BIOL Psychiatry (take a look).