Doctors and Drug Company’s Relationship

January 12, 2008 

The Facts 

Being a senior citizen, I am a member of AARP. I haven’t used any of their services yet, and don’t know if I ever will, but the annual dues are reasonable. But I do find some interesting articles in their monthly bulletin I get from them. In the January-February 2008 bulletin, there is a report on the relationship between doctors and drug company’s that I found interesting. Not that most of us don’t already know about this, it’s just that you don’t often find these facts in print. I thought I’d just list a few quotes from the article. The very first one should get your attention.  

Drugmakers spend billions a year wooing doctors with gifts and free trips. For years, pharmaceutical companies have courted America’s doctors with an ever-growing intensity, showering them with billions of dollars’ worth of gifts, consulting fees and trips to persuade them to prescribe their drugs. 

The Institute of Medicine at the National Academies is drawing up conflict of interest guidelines for doctors. 

“There are signs of a building momentum to restore a sense of medical ethics, a sense of service to the patient, to our profession,” says Howard Brody, M.D. 

A national survey published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which 94 percent of the doctors polled said they had “direct ties” to the drug industry. 

“Many doctors have been prescribing according to industry profits rather than the patient’s needs,” says Howard Brody of the University of Texas. 

“The Vioxx reps came by every two or three days with samples and other stuff because they were in a marketing war against Celebrex.” Reps, would call his office in the morning to see what the staff wanted for lunch: “Nothing fancy-pizza, sandwiches.” 

Despite a slight dip in spending in 2005, drugmakers still spend about $7 billion a year to win the hearts and minds of doctors and another $18 billion on free drug samples for doctors. 

One drug industry study, for instance, showed that when a drug rep got one minute with a doctor, the doctor’s prescriptions for that drug increased 16 percent. With three minutes-52 percent. 

The industry is vehemently opposed to marketing-disclosure legislation.  

New Hampshire passed a law in 2006 prohibiting drug companies from purchasing information about doctors’ prescribing habits, information they use to tailor their sales pitches. The industry challenged the law, and it was overturned in federal court last year. 

In New York, for example, the state Assembly passed one of the toughest disclosure bills in the country in 2006 and again in 2007, only to have the bill die in a Senate committee after what one supporter called “an army of lobbyists” descended on Albany.

My View 

Do you suppose that this is one of the major reasons prescription drugs are so expensive? I like the idea that doctors need a “conflict of interest” guideline to keep their morals in check. And this is not a random problem what with 94% of doctors involved. Also, notice that “the industry” is “vehemently” opposed to legislation that would reveal this behavior. And finally, that a federal court overturned New Hampshire’s laws mentioned above.  

I did a further check and found that seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans, and two by a Democrat, Bill Clinton. You may also recall one of the Bush administration scandals last year concerning the firing of federal prosecutors who all just happened to be Democrats. Makes you wonder which party affiliation the “federal court” belongs to that overturned the New Hampshire law, don’t it? 

I went to AARP on line and got the on-line copy of the report that was in my AARP bulletin. You can go here to read the entire article if you’d like.