We’re back from a brief holiday hiatus, just in time for some heartening news to kick off 2009: As of Jan. 1, the Big Pharma companies have all agreed to stop producing and issuing the gobs of free loot—everything from pens to mugs to flashlights to T-shirts—they’ve been passing out to doctors for years.
Critics poo poo the measure as little more than lip service, a PR move that doesn’t address the far bigger issue: that the drug industry and medicine are hopelessly financially intertwined. (Want proof? Exhibits A, B, and C.) Doctors, meanwhile, brush off the idea that logo-ed pens and Post-Its could alter their prescribing habits.
Still, there’s plenty to be said for the influence of everyday objects, not to mention the power of advertising. Surround yourself with enough Burger King merchandise, and you’d be amazed at how often you start craving Whoppers. Wouldn’t the same principle apply when it comes to physicians and drugs?
(Full disclosure: RB is the child of two doctors, and our childhood desk was filled to overflowing with pens, paperweights, magnets, notepads, and countless other booty emblazoned with words like Diflucan, Avandia, and Provigil. We never went to med school, but we’d probably prescribe Lipitor simply because of their awesome mousepads.)
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Welcome to today’s heaping dose of cynicism, to start off the weekend right: Scandal has hit none other than the Nobel Prize, after it was revealed that a member of the Nobel selection committee also sat on the board of AstraZeneca, a pharmaceuticals juggernaut that will benefit from this year’s award for medicine.
The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine went to three people this year, Luc Montagnier and his (ahem, female) partner Françoise Barre-Sinoussi for discovering HIV, and Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV) and its link to cervical cancer.
Wouldn’t you know it, AstraZeneca just happens to have a big fat stake in two lucrative HPV vaccines.
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Doctors and drug company money have gone together like peas and carrots for as long as most of us can remember. By now, it’s become almost a cliche to note that Big Pharma continues to spend billions every year “influencing” docs, some of whom are pocketing seven-figure checks for notoriously-nebulous “consulting fees.”
All of which makes it pretty remarkable that major medical centers are now planning to disclose the drug company ties of every one of their doctors. While criticism of the chummy relations between the medical and pharmaceutical communities has been on the rise in recent years, a move like this is unprecedented—and has the potential to set a new standard in the industry.
The leader of the disclosure charge is none other than medical behemoth the Cleveland Clinic, which will announce this week that it plan to disclose every physician and researcher tie to the pharmaceutical industry… on its Web site no less. Granted, the number of other hospitals that plan to take such a public and widespread approach to disclosure isn’t huge, according to ABC News, but it includes some pretty big names, including the University of Iowa and Duke University’s Clinical Research Institute.
But is it enough?
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