simply grotesque….

I wondered why the Bush administration had bothered to “stack” the FDA during their tenure; this seems one plausible reason for them to have done so. They also tried, but failed for the most part, to defeat NPR’s generally politically neutral coverage of issues and remove their federal funding entirely after already serious cutbacks. This
is one end-run that I think it very valuable for Grassley and Waxman to have blown the whistle on, and thank you Pharmalot for reporting on this, because (other than a brief ‘whoops’ admission statement from NPR itself) how else would we have known about it?

Are you saying that speaker programs are supposed to discuss off-label uses? Is that their only importance to industry?

“NPR which is government funded organization…”

I believe NPR receives very little fudning from the government, ~2%.

That is why preemption is such a destructive thing. Releasing any degree of social control over a mega corporation will allow it to drift off course even more. But eventually, just as a super tanker that drifts off course, the mega corporation will slam into something bigger than itself that will do it great harm. The only thing I can see that will do much harm to it will be the collective outrage of its customers.
The industry is kept afloat by the world’s consumers, the same ones that it helps and harms. It is adrift thinking everything is well but I think a terrible collision is in its future.

You took issue with my words that it takes two to Tango.

Well if you look at Ed’s chart it’s clearly been supplied by Glaxo, probably under Congressional request. Glaxo lists speaker’s honoraria for Lamictal for UNIPOLAR DEPRESSION. Now Lamictal is not approved for Unipolar depression. This raises some interesting questions. What was he talking about? If he’s consulting on the regulatory environment for promotion of off-label use, then why is it listed under speaker’s honoraria, instead of consulting services or consultative report? What’s Dr. Goodwin’s expertise that he can consult on a very specialized regulatory and legal area? Is he an attorney? Did he work in industry in regulatory affairs? Did he work at the FDA on this?

Glaxo also has a past history. During the year prior to approval for Lamictal for bipolar disorder they funded articles in Medscape the effectively promoted Lamictal for pregnant women with Bipolar disorder. In fact as a continueing education article I found the questions highly leading toward promoting Lamictal in pregnancy. For those who don’t know Medscape is a free throwaway magazine with review articles funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Plus the the author had extensive funding from Glaxo for talks etc..

Now this was about 6 months to a year before Lamictal was approved for bipolar and even earlier before the results of the pregnancy registry was reported. This would have thus provided an impetus for market uptake and penetration prior to the information about causing mental retardation. Now physicians like to say well in my experience I’ve never seen it. Which is pure garbage when you figure the statistical odds of any one particular physician seeing a case and putting 2 & 2 together. Plus Glaxo has talked about staged marketing jsut before this timeframe.

As for a conspiracy. I never said any such thing. People can and do act in ways out of pure self interest that would be exactly the same as they would act if they were conspiring.

You claim that the payments are legal and ethical. I have personally have my doubts based on the actual facts that we have. NPR which is government funded organization terminated his employment over this. According to government ethics regulations even the appearance of a conflict of interest is unethical.

You still haven’t answered my questions about what you do for your company. However, if I were to take a guess I would say Atlex stands for Attorney at Law, (L. lex, legis), and lawyers are advocates for their employer regardless of their actions.

I realize that Senator Grasley was pointing out the differnce between the hosts of the NPR shows and the policy of NPR that all possible conflicts should be revealed. This I believe was Senator Grassley’s chief concern about this issue and in my mind it is still unethical even if the specific rules state that it is not. If an individual is paid to endorse a particular product, even if he is in fact a true beleiver the fact that he has ties to that industry shoud be noted.
I go with Anon’s analysis that failure to reveal this information seriously calls into question about the unbiased nature of the information presented.