Pharma-funded clinical trials can be paydirt to doctors, yielding as much as $10,000 per patient in some cases . In 2010, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) addressed the frequent conflict of interest of doctors accepting major Pharma revenue while also accepting NIH money , our tax dollars. The medical institutions where the doctors work also are swimming in Pharma money, of course. It is a situation exacerbated by the "technology-transferring" Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 which dangled the riches of "industry" before medical institutions just as the former were floundering and the latter was booming, says Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. " Harvard's Clinical Research Institute (HCRI), for example, originally advertised itself as led by people whose 'experience gives HCRI an intimate understanding of industry's needs, and knowledge of how best to meet them,'" writes Dr. Angell, "as though meeting industry's needs is a legitimate purpose of an academic institution."
And not all clinical trials are kosher. Another sneaky way Pharma gets doctors to prescribe its drugs is to set up faux clinical trials. A 1995 study billed as assessing the safety, efficacy, and tolerability of Neurontin was nothing but a ruse to get the 772 participating doctors to prescribe the drug themselves, said an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine, because it gave them familiarity and experience with the drug. In addition to misleading the doctors who thought the trials were valid, the study also misled the patients who did not know it was a marketing, or "seeding" study, and whose participation was overseen by investigators with insufficient training and clinical experience. Eleven of the 2,759 patients in the trials died, 73 suffered severe adverse events and 997 experienced less serious side effects.
Read more about unethical drug company practices in Martha Rosenberg's award-cited Random House expose, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency--How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health. click here
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