[Corp. Watch] Big Pharma buys influence, drug sales by funding medical education

[Corporation Watch]

Drug Pushers in Academia

 How Big Pharma "educates" American doctors

By James Ridgeway 

(Mother Jones, June 28) -- The pharmaceutical industry has wormed its way into the hearts and minds of the medical professions in any number of ways -- wining and dining doctors, sending them off to vacation in splendid spas, and even buying their names to put on industry-written articles promoting different drugs.

	One little known facet of this drugster-doctor relationship is Big Pharma's role in continuing medical education (CME) programs, which are important in keeping medical professionals informed and up to date on the fast developing profession.

	Of the $2 billion or so spent on these programs every year, nearly half comes from the pharmaceutical business, which not-so-subtly uses the education programs to push new drugs.

	Last week, a conference at Georgetown University called "Prescription for Conflict" pulled together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss the question: Should industry fund continuing medical education?

	The main instigator here is Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, a teacher at Georgetown University Medical School. Fugh-Berman long ago became the nemesis of Big Pharma with a stream of articles and talks questioning the different aspects of liaison between the drugsters and the medical profession -- and the PharmedOut.org website that seeks to educate the public on these liaisons, in part through written and video exposes.

	The conference at Georgetown included few critics as candid as Fugh-Berman. Those gathered included academics who hedged their criticism of industry funding, and regulators like Deputy Commissioner at the FDA Joshua Sharfstein, and Julie Taitsman, chief medical officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, who presented a list of the different laws that protect the public from industry influence.

	By the time they finished, I was so frustrated with government bureaucrats that I was about ready to join the Tea Party (except that they, of course, would want to do even less to control the Big Pharma greedmeisters).

	One blunt critique came from Paul Thacker, an investigator for Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, who has been the most visible Congressional muckraker on the doctor-drug company love-in.

	 Thacker bluntly told the docs to get off their supercilious "Who, me?" attitude and come to grips with the scarcely believable conflicts of interest existing between the medical profession and the drug industry -- conflicts that more often than not have been to the detriment of their patients.

	The industry, as always, insists it isn't doing anything bad -- far from it. Big Pharma would have you believe that it's really performing a public service by trying to educate docs so they can do a better job.

	This conference, however, offered a different point of view, in the statement of an anonymous "pharmaceutical executive" who admitted that industry involvement in "CME has the potential for inappropriate promotional messaging and influence."

	The anonymous exec went on to state: "Typically, companies make CME investment decisions at annual budget meetings. The sales and marketing divisions dominate deliberations and distribution of CME cash."

	In deciding what institutions are to get money, he continued, "large ... influential institutions are not likely to be rejected … Friendly institutions, as defined by access and volume [of the company's drugs that are prescribed], are more likely to receive grants than those that favor another company’s products.

	"Grants may also be made in support of programs including particular KOLs [key opinion leaders] whose opinions resonate with the promotional plan … Similarly, those known for positions antithetical to the company’s promotional plan are less likely to be supported."

	In conclusion, the exec said, "CME contributions are commercial decisions." Too bad it takes a drug company whistleblower to make this statement of the obvious, rather than the medical organizations and government regulatory agencies who are supposed to be looking out for us.