Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15535
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
Lunn S.
Institute takes a cut in drug sales deal
The Australian 2009 Apr 28
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25396566-2702,00.html
Full text:
A LEADING Australian independent research institute is lending its name to an international drug company’s promotion of a blood thinning drug, in exchange for 25c a packet sold.
Baker Institute director Garry Jennings in Melbourne. Picture: Aaron Francis
The unprecedented deal between Melbourne-based Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute and French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi-Aventis, to be announced today, will reap about $500,000 for the institute’s research coffers in the coming year.
Sanofi-Aventis also manufactures the insomnia drug Stilnox. which hit the headlines in 2007 for its bizarre side-effects in some cases, including hallucinations and memory loss.
The deal comes as corporate sponsorship of medical research dwindles to a trickle in the global financial crisis.
The contract stipulates the Baker Institute is free to spend the sponsorship money on whatever cardiovascular or diabetes research it likes, and the institute denies it is endorsing the drug Plavix.
However, questions are being asked about whether the organisation risks the perception it is too close to the powerful multi-national pharmaceutical companies. Each time a doctor prescribes Plavix, an anti-clotting drug designed to cut the risk of stroke and heart attacks, the institute receives 25c from the drug’s marketing budget.
An advertisement to appear this Friday in the magazine Australian Doctor, spelling out the deal, has the Baker Institute’s name and logo alongside that of Sanofi-Aventis and Plavix. Baker Institute director Garry Jennings denied his organisation’s independence would be compromised by the deal, which would be fully transparent.
“There’s no question that in the general community there’s a feeling ‘big pharma’ is bad. We’ve all seen movies, read books and seen real examples where they’ve not acted in the best interests of the community, particularly in developing countries,” Dr Jennings told The Australian.
“So we’ve got to face that one. But, on the other hand, there’s no way our discoveries would get to the community if it wasn’t for the commercialisation process.”
Dr Jennings said despite its logo on the advertisement, the institute was not endorsing Plavix or Sanofi Aventis.
Asked if he was supping with the devil for sponsorship money, he said: “I certainly accept that is an instinctive reaction people may have. (But) I don’t think there’s anything to it when you look at the nuts and bolts of this arrangement. Look at the alternative. Would people rather the money be spent on pens and dinners (for doctors) or sent back to head office in Europe as profit, or spent on medical research in Australia? It’s pretty obvious what the answer is.”
Warwick Anderson, chief executive of the National Health and Medical Research Council, said research organisations looking to protect their independence should ask if a reasonable person would see the arrangement as an endorsement.
“Medical research institutes sponsored by pharmaceutical or biotech companies must make sure they have rigorous mechanisms in place to ensure the independence of their decision-making,” he said.
Times are tough for biotech organisations looking for corporate sponsorship. Capital raised by listed biotechs in Australia sank to $183 million last year from $943 million in 2007, said industry group AusBiotech Ltd.
Sanofi-Aventis spokesman Alan Brindell said the sponsorship money would come out of the marketing budget for Plavix. “We don’t see it as an inappropriate promotion. We want the arrangement to be transparent.”
