Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13665

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

Silverman E.
Pfizer To Disclose Grants And Charitable Donations
Pharmalot 2008 May 14
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/05/pfizer-to-disclose-grants-and-charitable-donations/

Notes:

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Full text:

Could this be a trend? The drugmaker has posted a list of grants and charitable contributions made in this year’s first quarter to medical, scientific and patient organizations in the US. The move comes one day after Lilly agreed to support a watered-down version of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and two months after AstraZeneca agreed to post info on its US web site about contributions to state and federal political candidates.

In a statement, Pfizer ceo Jeff Kindler utters the ‘T’ word twice. “We want to bring greater transparency to the way we partner with leading medical, scientific and patient organizations,” he says. “Detailing these grants and charitable contributions is an important part of our ongoing transparency drive.” Our thought: Why not list grants and contributions for at least last year and the year before?

You can see the list of recipients here (http://www.pfizer.com/responsibility/values_commitments/support_medical_patient_organizations.jsp.) Of a total $9.97 million in grants and charitable contributions reported for the first quarter of 2008, the largest grant – $3.4 million – was made to the California Academy of Family Physicians in March for what Pfizer calls a three-year national health care professional education campaign to reduce the number of smokers. Pfizer sells Chantix, of course.

There’s concern that donations result in off-label marketing by groups receiving funds; mask the agendas of public policy groups that debate policy issues, and allow researchers to circumvent normal dislcosure requirements. Last year, several drugmakers agreed to disclose charitable and educational contributions at the behest of various advocacy groups. You can read about that here (http://www.pharmalot.com/2007/06/pharma-should-disclose-charitable-educational-donations/).

To bolster its claims of transparency, Pfizer says that, as of 2002, clinical trials were listed on clinicaltrials.gov and began publicly reporting US political contributions. In 2004, Pfizer began publicly posting the results of its clinical trials at www.clinicalstudyresults.org, and in December 2006, Pfizer created a website describing compounds in development. Last year, Pfizer began reporting its FDA post-marketing commitments.