Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1772

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

Doctors under fire over drug company payments
2002 Jul 5

Full text:

Doctors are being criticised for not disclosing cash payments they receive from drug companies to recruit trial patients.

The claim comes from two ethics experts writing in the British Medical Journal.

They say some of the trials are “marketing thinly disguised as research” aimed at familiarising doctors with new and recently licensed products.

According to Dr Jammi Rao, chairman of West Midlands Multicentre Research Ethics Committee, and Louis Sant Cassia, chairman of the Coventry Research Ethics Committee, the payments can amount of thousands of pounds per patient.

They wrote: “The size of payment and not the buzz of research is what motivates doctors to join such trials.”

Well organised general practices in the UK could earn an extra £15,000 annually for three hours’ work a week, they said.

As a result, trials designed by non-commercial sponsors aiming to answer clinically important questions failed to attract doctors.

So-called postmarket Phase IV studies, which make no attempt to address important areas of clinical uncertainty, are said to be the biggest culprit.

The authors added: “A system that allows commercially driven and clinically dubious research to crowd out good and much needed clinical trials, and that denies patients the opportunity to put their altruism to the best possible use, is unethical and unacceptable.”

Royal College of Physicians guidelines say that per capita payments, especially for postmarketing studies, are unethical. Reimbursement for time spent is considered legitimate on condition that payments are declared to a research ethics committee.