Drug firms go all out for favor of physicians

[Desperadoe]

Fancy dinners for doctors are supposed to be a thing of the past for the pharmaceutical industry. The makers of medicines have been encouraged for more than a year to fete physicians only at modest restaurants to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

But physicians are still dining well on the tab of big pharmaceutical companies, suggests David Grande, a young, Philadelphia-trained physician.

Grande, who recently finished his medical residency at the University of Pennsylvania, recorded the restaurants that 150 fellow residents were invited to in a six-month period. He used the Philadelphia Zagat guide to determine priciness, and found that his colleagues were being invited to restaurants that were 42 percent more expensive than the Zagat average. Pharmaceutical companies were inviting residents once a week to the likes of Susanna Foo, Brasserie Perrier, and Kansas City Prime.

"The spirit of the guidelines being flouted," said Grande, whose findings with Penn researcher Kevin Volpp were published yesterday in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Things have not been corrected to the point it needs to be if the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry are really serious about preserving the public's trust."<snip>

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/6685656.htm

[teryang]

1. Patronage of Doctors by drug companies

...is a political as well as marketing strategy. By providing gratuities, cash grants for studies, free medications, payments for thought leaders on favorite medicinal therapies to address professional and lay medical societies, by grants to those societies, and financing CME which favors their particular medicinal product, the medical community is brought over to the pro-corporate view of medicine and society. The influence of pharmaceutical corporation money, and multimillion dollar PR campaigns disguised as science, on doctors is so pervasive, the bias in the medical community vis a vis these corporations is almost insurmountable. It influences the outcomes of so called "scientific studies" used to prove the safety and efficacy of drugs. It also affects Americans access to justice and just legislation with respect to pharmaceutical products.

Drug companies even contract physicians to use their names for medical articles ghost written by PR firms favoring one form of treatment or medication. The views of doctors involved in these sorts of promotional and PR activities become completely unbalanced toward the risk benefit analysis that should be undertaken before prescibing medications. It also affects the amount of effort doctors spend in trying to avoid medicinal intervention by timely use of more conservative measures, such as nutritional plans, exercise, environmental evaluation and intervention and stress management.

If a Doctor has received a 300,000.00 cash grant plus support in kind (free medications) to conduct just one study which may be the lead in further prospective cohort studies, is there any doubt the outcome will be favorable to the drug company? If the other physicians associated with the studies are designated VIPs (compensated for PR work) by the same pharmaceutical firm or its former employees is there any doubt of direction of bias in the study outcomes?

Because of this pervasive influence it is difficult to find doctors who will publicly criticize pharmaceutical firms or even one product either in the courts, legislatures or state or national regulatory bodies. Doctors who are already politically favored under Medical Malpractice Reform laws are induced to favor "Tort reform" in the strict liability area as well because they do not want to be called upon to express medical opinions about Pharmaceutical products.

[BiggJawn]

2. So THATS why my doctor keeps me on the same worthless shit..

His answer to a certain med not working? don't REPLACE it, SUPPLEMENT it!
Wonder what HIS study is? "How long before a patient gets fed up with expensive, non-working medications and rebels"?

When i was a little kid, I'd call it the "Hypocrit's Oath"...Didn't know I was a visonary then...

[saigon68]

3. Paid for by the U.S. wage earner and taxpayer

There is something dishonest about this---- it doesn't pass the smell test.