Ties That Bind? Pharma, Money And Doctors
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 27th, 2008 // 8:08 am
The investigation by the Senate Finance Committee into academic researchers who simultaneously receive funding from pharma and the NIH - without fully disclosing their payments - has been followed closely on this site. For those of you, however, who enjoy a watching televised version of the saga, or simply missed an item here or there, CBS Evening News ran a segment last night. Here it is…
Bruce
Interesting new report. Not exactly ground breaking news, but this is CBS.
What I find ironic is that the report used a Canadian study to prove an American theory of Pharma-Physician linkage. Has anyone read it? I am curious to look at the assumption they made to come up with >$50 B.
Atlex
Bruce,
I’ll go you one further. The number they cite is $57B for “payments” to physicians. No doubt pharma spends a great deal in payments to physicians (research grants, speakers fees, consulting, etc.). However, that number is beyond ridiculous. It demonstrates either that the reporter and CBS News are intentionally biased or that they are simply ignorant and have been swayed by so called experts who have an anti-pharma agenda. I defy anyone to come up with a valid reference for the figure cited in this report.
Atlex
Henry
Well Phrma the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer’s Association has a press release on their website that total R&D spending in 2006 was 55.2 $Billion.
http://www.phrma.org/news_room/press_releases/r&d_spending_by_u.s._biopharmaceutical_companies_reaches_a_record_55.2_billion_in_2006/
Now much of this also probably includes marketing research studies, ’scientific conferences’, inclusion of key opinion leaders performing studies where they don’t actually contribute patients or patients whose data can’t be used. In addition, it has just recently been reported that Pharma marketing spending is approximately double R&D spending and only a small bit of marketing spending is advertising, pens, papers, mugs etc.
Given all that, $57 Billion actually seems like a low estimate to me.
Atlex, next time rather than simply make ad hominum attacks please just do a google search first. It really doesn’t take more than a few seconds.
Strphen Paul Reid
This is plain and simple bribery. How many more kids need to die to prop up the earnings of drug companies selling ineffective and harmful poisons?