Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6705
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
Dow S.
Specialist spills beans on drug company freebies
Age Newspaper ( Melbourne) 2006 Dec 4
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/specialist-spills-beans-on-drug-company-freebies/2006/12/03/1165080818737.html
Full text:
Specialist spills beans on drug company freebies
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/specialist-spills-beans-on-drug-company-freebies/2006/12/03/1165080818737.html
Steve Dow
December 4, 2006
Cancer specialist Ian Haines believes that accepting drug company
hospitality compromises independence.
A MELBOURNE cancer specialist has blown the whistle on drug companies’
widespread showering of medical professionals, with gratuitous
hospitality, with free business class travel to international cities,
stays in top hotels and fine dining in elite restaurants regularly doled
out.
Cabrini oncologist Ian Haines’ affidavit lodged in the Federal Court in
Sydney last week alleges drug company relationships are compromising
medical specialists’ professional independence, and provides a rare
insight into how the pharmaceutical industry has co-opted doctors’
decision-making.
Dr Haines says he accepted a typical sponsorship offer from the drug
company Novartis of business class travel worth $10,000 in June 2004,
plus five days’ accommodation at the New Orleans Hampton Inn, worth
$2000, and lunch and dinner each day and excursions around the city,
valued at $1000.
That’s a total of $13,000 given freely, even though he was only an
audience member at the Novartis-sponsored conference, not a speaker.
This year, Dr Haines initially accepted separate offers from Roche of
free trips to Amsterdam and Valencia, which he then declined because he
“had become increasingly concerned that I was compromising my
independence and integrity by accepting sponsorship to attend this type
of meeting”.
Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Novartis have all offered Dr Haines invitations to
weekends around Australia over the past six months, offering free air
fares, accommodation and food. Dr Haines refuses such invitations, which
come at a rate of at least one a week, because they are “predominantly a
marketing exercise”.
Until 1999, Dr Haines says, cancer doctors from across Melbourne would
meet among themselves on a Saturday to discuss their field. But since
then, drug companies have commandeered these meetings and turned them
into lavish dinners.
Now, at such meetings, Dr Haines “seldom” hears an oncologist express an
opinion contrary to the interests of the sponsoring pharmaceutical company.
In his affidavit, he attacks the drug companies for preventing “open and
honest discussion”.
The pharmaceutical industry body Medicines Australia is fighting efforts
by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to force greater
transparency of drug company hospitality.
Among the ACCC’s demands is that Medicines Australia monitor and publish
regularly data from all drug companies’ hospitality.
Dr Haines’ affidavit was tendered on behalf of the ACCC.
Medicines Australia last week argued to the Australian Competition
Tribunal that the industry’s self-regulating code of conduct, dating
back to 1960, was effective because rival drug companies regularly
reported breaches, and said that once hospitality data was published it
would be “fodder for sensational reporting” in the media.
Instead of publishing the data, Medicines Australia argued it should
appoint an auditor to oversee company records on hospitality, but which
would stay in company vaults.
But the tribunal’s deputy president, Justice Robert French, told the
court that, at present, while competitors might be able to monitor each
other’s misleading advertising claims, when it comes to drug companies
“paying too much for dinner at the Flower Drum restaurant”, there might
exist a tacit understanding between companies of “let’s not stir the pot
because we all do it”.
