Which doctors are paid the most by Big Pharma to promote their drugs?
As part of its ongoing investigation on the financial ties between doctors and pharmaceutical companies, the investigative news organization ProPublica has highlighted some of the leaders, a list including a number of physicians not well known in their fields.
Drawn from its “Dollars for Docs” database, ProPublica zeroed in on 43 top earners. All 43 were paid at least $200,000 since 2009 from one or more of the seven companies that have publicly disclosed payments made for speaking engagements: GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Co., Pfizer, Cephalon, Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson.
It’s unclear whether the data is representative of the industry as a whole, because more than 70 pharmaceutical companies have not released their payment information. As such, it’s very possible that the highest earners in the industry make much more than the figures shown for the top earners in the ProPublica database.
On its list, however, ProPublica found that fewer than half of the paid speakers are prominent leaders in their medical societies or are educators affiliated with academic medical centers. The rest either had thin credentials or low profiles. Eight of the top 43 have no advanced medical certification, even though they spoke about specialized diseases and their treatments.
More than half of the physicians spoke on behalf of two or three companies. One doctor worked for five. Of the 43, 11 are board certified in endocrinology, a small but competitive field because of the huge market for diabetes drugs.
Among medical professionals, there is an ongoing dispute over whether doctors should promote drug makers’ products.
Dr. Eliot Brinton, an associate professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine, told ProPublica that he has closely followed that debate. Since 2009, he has made at least $203,900 from three companies in the database, and said he works for at least three other drug makers.
“There is always the potential that somehow I’m getting in under the radar and then springing this very subtle and very pernicious sales message,” he said. “I’m listening to myself every time I speak, and I have to ask myself the question: ‘Is what I’m saying truthful?’”
So far, Brinton said, he believes it is.
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If a physician is speaking about a new product, better than the existing molecules on the market, that can actually be an asset. If someone is speaking about a me-too drug, that raises questions. New HIV molecules have saved many lives. To speak to a combo drug like an old anti-hypertensive- statin really does not forward the cause of quality medicine. Ultimately, the audience listening to the speaker should be the final authority.