Boston Legal: TV Drama Or Reality Show?
8 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 29th, 2008 // 7:04 am
There is little time to watch TV on the Pharmalot corporate campus, but we were directed to a recent episode of ‘Boston Legal,’ that compelling drama about - what else? - a bunch of emotionally challenged lawyers, because there was mention of a recent pharma issue being investigated by the US Senate Finance Committee.
To wit, the committee is looking at alleged instances of undisclosed conflicts of interests involving academics who receive National Institutes of Health grants to research certain drugs and payments from drugmakers for consulting, research or speaking (back story). This is prominently noted by actress Candace Bergen, along with other matters such as pharma ties to the FDA, Congress and doctors, in a speech to a jury about a woman who suffered a heart attack after taking a drug…
“You know the death grip the pharmaceutical industry has on this country. They’ve infiltrated the FDA. A study showed that 90 percent of all FDA advisory meetings had at least one person with ties to big pharmaceuticals. And then there’s Congress. Big pharma gave members of Congress $70 million since 1990. So what does that leave us with but our doctors?
“And even they’re being bought. Between consulting fees and rebates, doctors get hundreds of millions. A famed Harvard psychiatrist helped fuel the recent boom in antipsychotics for kids. Turns out he personally took over $1.6 million from drugmakers over the past seven years. He also failed to report this income to the university, by the way. How can this be? We have no regulations. No disclosure procedures in place. Nothing to ensure that we, the patients, can know whether our doctor is on the take…It was prescribed by her own physician, perhaps because he had the financial incentive to do so…”
Any idea which Harvard University psychiatrist she could have been talking about?
(To watch, please go to this link and click on season 5, episode 6, and skip to about 27 minutes into the program, although it can take awhile to load and you may need to install a plug-in).
Dan A.
Great point and association with this post, Ed.
An FDA Reviewer
Back in 2002 I turned on an episode of St. Elsewhere and watched Noah Riley’s character got into a rant about a drug company pushing an unsafe drug through FDA corruptly that had hurt one of their patients.
His rant was virtually identical to what I had said to another FDA reviewer that same day.
Deja vu
Justice in MI
FDA reviewer - what do you think about the report announced in the above thread? What proportion of the 2002-6 FDA line reviewers, do you think, what support these conclusions?
Thank you for your thoughts.
FDA Reviewer
I think any line reviewer at FDA for any reasonable amount of time (2 yrs) and has seen the reality would agree.
Justice in MI
Thank you, FDA Reviewer. It will be ‘interesting’ to see how the preemptor lobby tries to make sense of the report. I predict the following;
1. This is not really representative of the FDA (even though some very senior and experienced people are involved).
2. It’s just Waxman using it for poltical grandstanding (which avoids the reality of the report itself).
3. Nobody said the FDA couldnt use additional help (the patronizing approach, even though preemptors gutted FDAAA).
4. The devastation trial lawyers do is worse than an imperfect FDA. This is probably their best card, but we’re not talking about an “imperfect” FDA. We’re talking about an FDA that does not even begin to resemble the image of the agency that has been the foundation of the preemptors’ argument. In several specific instances, their assertions are shown to be directly contradicted by the facts.
So most of the preemption argument becomes what it always was - a shell with nothing inside.
Lisa Van S
FDA Reviewer
The program was ER and the actor was Noah Wiley.
Christopher
Noah Wyle, I think.
Lisa Van S
I believe you are correct…