From Congressional Quarterly:Critics say physicians who speak at medical society meetings are so compromised by industry sponsorships that, in the words of an Ohio retinal surgeon, “we have reached the point where it would be more convenient for speakers to simply wear NASCAR-style jackets emblazoned with their sponsor’s logos.”
Concerns about industry marketing practices were addressed at a hearing Wednesday in which witnesses said much needs to be done to clear away an enormous web of conflicts of interest spun among physicians by drug industry marketing dollars. Most agreed that the federal government should publicize how much money drug companies are paying to individual doctors, but that should only be the first step.
While I'm not saying that reform couldn't improve things, however, Doctors that do have a financial relationship with a manufacturer are required, and I've heard plenty of them do it, state that at the beginning of a lecture.
It's also ironic that Congress, who are on the take from just about everyone, and receive campaign contributions from big business in far excess than most Doctors make in a lifetime, are going to tell us how to clean things up.Medicine TagHealth Tag
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From The International Tribune:The company that makes the painkiller OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, has agreed to pay $600 million in fines and other payments to resolve the criminal charge of "misbranding" its product, one of the largest amounts ever paid by a drug company in such a case.
The company and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty in federal court here Thursday to criminal charges that the firm had misled doctors and patients when it claimed that the drug was less likely to be abused than traditional narcotics.
The three executives, including the company's president and its top lawyer, also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of misbranding the drug. Together, they agreed to pay $34.5 million in fines.
We say: Yeah, but when they made billions on this product, these millions of dollars of fines are simply the cost of doing business, and a slap on the wrist.Medicine TagHealth Tag Save This Page
From MedPage Today:
Minnesota and Vermont require pharmaceutical companies to disclose payments of $100 or more to physicians and other health care providers, but both states have been accused of failing to deliver on that promise of transparency.
The two states are not living up to their pledges to make it clear to patients whether pharmaceutical company largess and gifts of various kinds might be influencing physicians unduly in the choice of drugs they prescribe, said geriatrician Joseph S. Ross, M.D., M.H.S., of Mount Sinai Medical School, in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"The Vermont and Minnesota laws requiring disclosure of payments do not provide easy access to payment information for the public and are of limited quality once accessed," wrote Dr. Ross. "However, substantial numbers of payments of $100 or more were made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies."
More. Of course, this just means that the drug companies will put more money into direct to patient advertising. Whether it's the nightly news where almost all the commercials are drug related, or pick up any popular magazine, and we can start to see the influence that these pharmaceutical companies have on our society.Medicine TagHealth Tag Save This Page
From Congressional Quarterly:
