Pharma overtakes arms industry to top the league of misbehaviour

[natasa778]

... GSK case has shaken even the most hardened of industry observers, as prosecutors found the company had been allotting over half a million dollars a year to its district sales representatives to offer doctors regular golf lessons, fishing trips, and basketball tickets while promoting the use of antidepressant drug Paxil in children. The GSK sales campaign also involved helping to publish an article in a medical journal that misreported evidence from a clinical trial. ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/08/pharma-misbehaviour-gsk-fine?newsfeed=true

 

[floydguy]

UK companies are making US ones look well behaved these days. Doubt we'll see Trine write about this. I wonder if some of this dough goes to friendly PR consultants like Trine.

 

[natasa778]

UK companies are making US ones look well behaved these days. Doubt we'll see Trine write about this. I wonder if some of this dough goes to friendly PR consultants like Trine.

I'd be very surprised if there was at an absence of strong family ties if not direct renumeration. Wasn't her sis at the helm of a PR company that was doing lots of baking for 'public health issues' on behalf of companies and gov institutions? (exact details foggy at the moment ...)

 

[Merry]

And a story appeared in yesterday's Slate about the television personality Dr. Drew Pinsky's big payoffs from promoting GlaxoSmithKline drugs:

"If you've ever seen Dr. Drew Pinsky on TV, you've seen the look: lips pursed, eyes narrowed, head slightly tilted to stage right. It's an expression that seems practiced in front of a mirror, designed to dispense to his troubled patients precisely the right dosage of compassion tinged with disapproval—but, instead, it makes him look like his mind is somewhere else, off golfing or figuring out where his next paycheck is going to come from.

"Thanks to the Justice Department, we now know of a Dr. Drew payday large enough to trigger a reverie or two. As part of its monstrous $3 billion settlement with the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the DOJ unsealed documents showing that the dear doctor had taken in at least $275,000 for "services for Wellbutrin."

"Precisely how can one service an antidepressant like Wellbutrin? According to the government's complaint, Dr. Drew was hired to "deliver messages about [Wellbutrin SR] in settings where it did not appear that Dr. Pinsky was speaking for GSK." After Pinsky suggested that Wellbutrin might be responsible for increasing a woman's orgasm rate—to as many as 60 orgasms in a good night—an internal GSK memo noted approvingly that Dr. Drew had "communicated key campaign messages" about Wellbutrin to the public."
Read the full article here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...ompany_money_is_your_doctor_on_the_take_.html

 

[Merry]

More information at the non-profit investigative journalism organization ProPublica's website:

http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

I haven't read this yet.

Edit: Oh, I see you can check for the names of doctors in ProPublica's database to find out who has received payment from drug companies:

http://www.propublica.org/series/dollars-for-docs