Big Dollar Payments To Prescribers And At Long Last, A Big Pharma Ethical Crackdown.

From Saturday's New York Times, a totally non-shocking story of Big Money, Big Pharma, and the stink of corruption that will surprise everyone except those who pay attention:

It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster.

There's your first sign of trouble right there. The words "drug makers" and "rigorous studies" in the same sentence. Big Pharma only has to show a med meets a minimum standard of safety and works better than a placebo to bring it to market. They don't even have to show it works a lot better than a placebo. Which means "rigorous studies" and "drug companies" go together like "Ambien CR" and "good value."

But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress, accused of allowing this relationship to become too cozy. After a series of stinging investigations of individual doctors’ arrangements with drug makers, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association, the field’s premier professional organization, give an accounting of its financing.

“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Mr. Grassley said Thursday in a letter to the association.

"I have also come to understand that fecal material from mammals can emit a foul odor, and that the sun will rise at the beginning of the day at a point along the easterly horizon and set in the west, to the complete exclusion to the north" Grassley didn't really add.

Speaking of emitting a foul odor:

One of the doctors named by Mr. Grassley is the association’s president-elect, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg of Stanford, whose $4.8 million stock holdings in a drug development company raised the senator’s concern. In a telephone interview, Dr. Schatzberg said he had fully complied with Stanford’s rigorous disclosure policies and federal guidelines that pertained to his research.

Blocking or constraining researchers from trying to bring medications to market “will mean less opportunities to help patients with severe illnesses,” Dr. Schatzberg said, adding, “Drugs that are helpful may not be developed by big pharmaceutical companies, for a variety of reasons, and we need some degree of communication between academia and industry” to expand options for patients.

Now I'm just a hillbilly boy with a Bachelor's degree.....but it seems to me, Dr. Schatzberg, that I'm communicating right now and I didn't have to buy anyone's stock to do it. The problem......doctor.....is that it appears you stand to personally profit from the sales of a product you can influence through your professional decisions.

Did I really need to explain that to you? Or did you just think that by dazzling us with some fancy Stanford doubletalk you could get us to miss the point? You're either really stupid or you think we really are. One of the two. I think I know which one it is you condescending prick.

While the pompous assholiness of Dr. Schatzberg is grating to the nerves. The honesty of some of his colleagues can be a bit entertaining:

After The Times reported on such an arrangement involving Dr. Melissa P. DelBello of the University of Cincinnati, Mr. Grassley asked the university to provide her income disclosure forms and asked AstraZeneca, the maker of the antipsychotic Seroquel, to reveal how much it paid her.

In scientific publications, Dr. DelBello has reported working for eight drug makers and told university officials that from 2005 to 2007 she earned about $100,000 in outside income, according to Mr. Grassley.

But AstraZeneca told Mr. Grassley it paid her more than $238,000 in that period. AstraZeneca sent some of its payments through MSZ Associates, an Ohio corporation Dr. DelBello established for “personal financial purposes.”

Which is exactly how I think Vito Corleone would have described his olive importing business in "The Godfather." A corporation he established for personal financial purposes.....

Anyway, Big Pharma's finally making an ethical stand:

Come next year, doctors may start to see a problem they've yet to experience -- a pen shortage.

New guidelines released on Thursday by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) prohibit drug makers from giving out pens, as well as other "non-educational" items such as mugs, to healthcare providers and their staffs.

I swear.....I am not making this up. Truckloads of money are being sent by drug companies to prominent prescribers who have the power to make or break a new med, but the problem is the Ambien CR tape dispenser/stapler I have on my desk.



My God just look at it. The very symbol of decedent corruption. I feel like such a whore.

By the way, The head of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America? A man named Billy Tauzin. Billy Tauzin was a Member of Congress who held open a 15 minute vote in The House of Representatives for 3 hours so the Medicare Part D bill "written by the pharmaceutical lobbyists" could be rammed through at 3 in the morning. "I've been in politics for 22 years," said one of Tauzin's colleagues, "and it was the ugliest night I have ever seen in 22 years." Big Pharma got what Big Pharma wanted though, and months later Billy Tauzin left his $158,000 a year Congressional job to earn $2 million a year with PhRMA. I hope no pens were involved in that hiring decision. Because that would look bad.

Holy crap I just noticed there's a Levemir pen in that pic too. I am a whore. A whore who didn't ask for nearly enough.