To make clinical trials successful, drugmakers need several things - especially doctors. But in Minnesota, pharma regularly pays docs who have been disciplined or criticized by a medical board, according to an analysis of state records by The New York Times. Experts say the problem exists on a national scope.

From 1997 to 2005, at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.

The sanctions ranged from reprimands to demands for retraining to suspension of licenses. Of those 103 doctors, 39 had been penalized for inappropriate prescribing practices, 21 for substance abuse, 12 for substandard care and 3 for mismanagement of drug studies. A few cases received national news media coverage, but drug makers hired the doctors anyway.

At least 38 doctors received a combined $140,000 while they were still under sanction. A notable example was Faruk Abuzzahab, who received more than $55,000 from 1997 to 2005. His licenses was suspended for seven months and restricted for another two years over more than 40 instances in which patients of reckless disregard for patients, including five who died. He helped study Paxil, Prozac, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zoloft and Zyprexa.

Often, these studies are simply marketing gimmicks. The purpose is to encourage docs to prescribe the drugs, which frequently are being tested for uses not yet approved. This can open a whole new market and so the investments - add up the money paid Minnesota docs - is pennies compared with what the results can yield in new scrips written.

David Rothman, president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University, says: “There’s no reason to think Minnesota is unique. Clinical trial investigators must be culled from only the finest physicians in the country, since they work on the frontiers of new knowledge. That drug makers are scraping the bottom of the medical barrel is an outrage.”

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