Healthy Skepticism Library item: 205

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

Cornacchia , C .
Cozying up to drug firms disturbs some physicians: Heart doctor complained to professional order after being invited to refer patients to clinical trial
The Gazette 2004 Feb 24

Full text:

Cardiologist Colin Rose, who also teaches medicine at McGill, says close relationships to drug firms undermine doctors’ willingness to try non-pharmaceutical treatments for their patients.

When a company contacted Colin Rose and offered to pay him $6,000 to refer patients to a drug study, they had the wrong doctor.

Rose, a cardiologist at the Montreal General Hospital, not only said no, but he passed the written offer to the Collège des médecins du Québec, suggesting it investigate the ethics of paying doctors to refer patients.

“I’m about the last one on Earth they should have contacted,” Rose said yesterday.

It turns out that the physicians’ college doesn’t investigate those kinds of cases, but the doctor is no less upset by the offer to send patients to the study, which was sponsored by Merck Frosst.

Rose, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at McGill University, is outspoken about what he sees as an increasingly cozy relationship between doctors and drug companies. He says it undermines doctors’ will to suggest alternatives like lifestyle changes instead of prescription drugs.

The hypercholesterolemia and coronary heart disease study to which Rose referred is being conducted by the Clinical Research Consultant Group at the Seaforth Medical Building on Côte des Neiges Rd .

The group’s letter to Rose, dated Nov. 18, 2003, detailed how he would receive an honorarium of $6,000 if he referred at least one patient being treated for high cholesterol and heart disease. He would have been required to perform a physical exam of the patients at the beginning and end of the study and write the initial prescription. Nurses employed by the group would do the rest – seeing patients throughout the 12-week study.

The study is evaluating the cholesterol-lowering efficacy of a 10-milligram dose of a drug called Ezetimibe when given with a 10-milligram or 20-milligram dose of Atorvastatin, another cholesterol-lowering drug. Both drugs are approved for use in Canada.

Rose later received an e-mail from Bernice Pynn, the lead researcher of the drug study, saying “at this time there is no discussion of publication” of the study results. Pynn, a biochemist, was unavailable for comment yesterday. However, an assistant at the clinical research group confirmed the multisite study is sponsored by Merck Frosst. So far, she said, 15 patients are enrolled in Montreal.

Vincent Lamoureux, a spokesperson for Merck Frosst in Kirkland, said doctors are sometimes compensated for their time. However, he said, he was unfamiliar with the study Rose cited, even though “there definitely seems to be a link to some of what we do.”