Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9862
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
Catalano C.
Medicos on drugs industry payroll, survey finds
The Age (Melbourne) 2007 Apr 30
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/medicos-on-drugs-industry-payroll-survey-finds/2007/04/29/1177787971248.html
Full text:
ONE IN four doctors has admitted to doing paid work for a drug company, throwing the spotlight again on the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over prescribing habits.
A survey of more than 3000 US-based doctors found that 28 per cent had taken money to sit on an advisory board, give a lecture or push patients into a new drug trial. Only 52 per cent responded to the questions.
Specialists were also more likely to be on the pharmaceutical industry payroll, because it believed their opinion would influence the prescribing habits of less qualified doctors.
The survey found cardiologists were more than twice as likely as general practitioners to get payments.
“Certainly there’s a cascading down through the medical system of treatments that are initiated by specialists,” said Garry Jennings, director of the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne. “Without in any way diminishing the role of a GP, I think the opinion of a more specialised doctor can have a big impact on the way they prescribe drugs and treatments,” he said.
Melbourne oncologist Ian Haines said in Australia pharmaceutical representatives spoke openly about the grooming of influential doctors to push their product to peers.
Dr Haines said cardiologists, gastroenterologists and oncologists were targeted in particular, because “that’s where where the most expensive, or ‘blockbuster drugs’ exist”.
The study, whose co-author was Melbourne surgeon Russell Gruen, was published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found 94 per cent said they had some sort of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Most of these cases related to taking free drug samples or free meals.
Dr Haines said it was almost impossible for a doctor to learn about latest medical developments in their field without involving themselves with a drug company.
“We hardly have an educational event now that’s not in some way sponsored by a pharmaceutical company.”
Dr Gruen said the potential conflict of interest was avoidable. “We should have the workplace fund those (educational) meetings and not rely on industry sponsorship,” he said.
“Sponsorship is usually problematic. The drug company is only there because they know it works.”
