Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13916

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Publication type: news

Loftus P.
Pfizer Ends Direct Funding of Courses
The Wall Street Journal 2008 Jul 3
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121500694573822937.html

Full text:

Pfizer Inc., hoping to temper criticism that it is improperly influencing
doctors, is eliminating direct financial support for medical-education
courses that are offered by third-party companies.

The New York drug maker will continue to fund courses in so-called
continuing medical education, or CME, at academic institutions, teaching
hospitals and those supported by medical societies. It will no longer
directly support CME courses offered by for-profit medical-education and
communication companies.

Pfizer said it is ending the payments to avoid the appearance of any
conflicts of interest. Critics have charged that industry-supported CME
courses for doctors are not purely educational but rather designed to
promote use of specific medicines.

A report by the Senate Finance Committee last year concluded the drug
industry used educational grants totaling $1 billion annually to increase
the market for their products, including the promotion of drugs for uses
not approved by regulators.

“The reason we’re not going to directly support them has to do with
mitigating the perception of a conflict of interest, if a direct payment is
going from a company like Pfizer to them,” said Cathryn Clary, Pfizer’s
vice president of U.S. external medical affairs. The company will honor its
existing commitments to CME companies.

Pfizer spent about $80 million last year on CME courses offered by
companies and nonprofit organizations alike, Ms. Clary said, with less than
half going to for-profit companies. Pfizer began disclosing details of its
educational grants on its Web site in May. Rival Eli Lilly & Co. began
making similar disclosures last year.

The drug industry has taken a series of steps recently to become more
transparent about how it does business, often under political pressure.
Companies have begun posting details about clinical trials and political
contributions on their Web sites. Merck & Co. and AstraZeneca PLC in May
expressed support for Senate legislation that would require the public
disclosure of certain financial relationships between industry and doctors.

Disclosure aside, some critics question whether the industry should have
any role in physicians’ education.

Commercial CME courses have become a niche industry. Doctors need to attend
these courses in order to keep their medical licenses. Dozens of companies,
including PDI Inc., a sales and marketing company based in Saddle River,
N.J., offer the courses to doctors.

Pfizer’s rationale for supporting CME has been that physician education
will improve patient care and will “be aligned, in some cases, with our
business interests,” Ms. Clary said. She said Pfizer supports medical
education in therapeutic areas in which the company has some sort of
business interest, but it does not require that the content of courses be
about Pfizer products.

Recently, some drug makers and CME organizations have taken steps to ensure
course content is more insulated from the business interests of the
companies funding it. Rockpointe Corp., a for-profit CME provider in
Columbia, Md., has “retooled” itself to reduce the chances for drug-company
bias in its courses for doctors, President Thomas Sullivan said.

Rockpointe has received funding from Pfizer but will not be eligible under
the new criteria. Mr. Sullivan questioned whether Pfizer’s move would make
much of a difference in reducing bias in CME, especially since Pfizer will
continue to fund nonprofit CME.

Pfizer will continue to support academic and medical-society CME because
“their primary mission is patient care,” Ms. Clary said.

Pfizer may continue indirect support for commercial CME companies, as well.
That’s because the academic centers and medical associations Pfizer
supports may contract with CME companies, according to Ms. Clary. “The
distinction we’re making is we’re not directly paying them,” Ms. Clary said.