Re: Drug giants accused over doctors' perks
Sir Arthur
> "Sir Arthur" <sci...@zzz.com> wrote in message
> news:2c84c205-3250-48e4...@v39g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 24, 2:04 pm, "Sir Arthur is a fraud" <fraudwa...@hotsmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> This article PROVES everything that I have ever wrote,
> ===========================================
> Is parrotosis, yes, for sure.
You are a sad little man (and even that is giving you too much
credit!)
Drug giants accused over doctors' perks
Free flights, meals and match tickets can damage patient care, say
critics
* Sarah Boseley and Rob Evans
* The Guardian,
Drug companies are spending millions of pounds every year on all-
expenses-paid trips to conferences around the world for doctors and
other hospital staff, in what critics say is a massive marketing
exercise dressed up as medical education.
The Guardian can reveal the scale of pharmaceutical company
sponsorship following an examination of the registers of gifts and
donations to doctors that all hospitals are required to keep. They
show considerable largesse - from drug companies regularly picking up
hefty bills for travel to international conferences in Europe, Asia
and America, to specialist nurses' salaries, and weekly sandwich
lunches for hospital staff training sessions.
All-expenses-paid trips to conferences in the US, Vietnam or Hungary
are a regular feature of the registers, costing the companies up to
£5,000 per doctor. Many of the declarations by doctors do not put a
price on the trip. The total amounts received by staff at individual
hospital trusts with complete registers are substantial - Sheffield's
staff received funding of more than £105,000 from pharmaceutical and
medical devices companies in the 12 months to last June.
Examples of the firms' hospitality include:
· Astra Zeneca paid £2,500 for a doctor at the Royal Bournemouth trust
and £1,500 for a doctor at Sheffield teaching hospital to attend a
cancer conference in Texas
· Sanofi-Aventis, the world's fourth biggest pharmaceutical company,
paid for doctors at the Countess of Chester trust to go to conferences
in Cape Town, New Orleans and Barcelona. At Gateshead trust, their
reps gave a breakfast for 30 staff "to discuss drugs for the treatment
of breast cancer". The trust's register records that "the donor was
seeking to secure business".
· Roche spent £2,000 for an oncology consultant at Addenbrooke's
hospital in Cambridge to go to a conference in May last year.
· GSK, the biggest British pharmaceutical company, paid £1,200 for a
consultant at Sheffield teaching hospital to attend the 11th
international congress of Parkinson's disease and movement disorders
in Turkey last June.
· Companies have also been taking hospital staff to top football and
rugby matches. Carillion, a public sector construction firm, spent
£180 taking a senior manager at Milton Keynes trust to lunch and then
a rugby match at Twickenham last August.
Most doctors deny that their reliance on drug company cash makes them
biased. The pharmaceutical companies argue that they are helping
doctors acquire further medical education by funding their trips to
conferences in foreign cities, but they refuse to reveal how much they
pay out.
However, the health select committee warned in a report in 2005 that
the industry's sponsorship of doctors and other medical staff had drug
promotion as its motive and could lead to unsafe prescribing of drugs
such as Vioxx, the arthritis drug which was found to cause heart
attacks.
Joe Collier, the recently retired professor of medicines policy at St
George's hospital, London, a former member of the Medicines Commission
and an adviser to the select committee, said: "Through its
orchestrated campaigns affecting all those involved in the use of
medicines, the pharmaceutical industry enormously influences what
patients are prescribed. On the whole these influences are detrimental
to best practice."
Payments to doctors are far from transparent. The Department of Health
requires NHS trusts to compile registers of their medical staff's and
directors' possible conflicts of interest and to make them available
to the public. Only a minority do so. The Guardian requested the
registers for 90 hospital trusts under freedom of information
legislation. Only around a quarter returned data that included the
names of the doctors and the sponsoring companies and the amounts of
money received. Some refused to give any information at all.
Collier said this was unacceptable. "Declarations of interest are a
key way to help break the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold. It
is not a trivial issue. Public declarations by doctors are essential
if prescribing is to be sensible and appropriate and according to
patients' needs."
Consumers International (CI) said the lack of transparency was
unacceptable. "When a medical professional speaks on a health issue,
we assume that they are putting patients' interests first. If that
person has a conflict of interest because they or their organisation
are receiving funding from a drug company the least we should demand
is the right to know about it," said Justin Macmullan, head of
campaigns. "Pharmaceutical companies will tell you that what they are
funding is medical education. But our concern is that this is really
highly effective, well-targeted marketing. This throws any notion of
impartiality out of the window and jeopardises a doctor's ability to
make an informed, balanced decision about the most appropriate
treatments."
CI wants drug companies to declare how much they give to doctors.
"Countries such as the US and Australia have woken up to this issue
and are now requiring pharmaceutical companies to disclose their
funding of medical organisations and medical education. European
regulators have been sleeping on the job," he said.
Labour MP Paul Flynn described as "codswallop" the companies' claim
that their only intention was to help educate doctors. "It's not true.
It's part of a huge marketing budget. It's all about maximising their
profits, not helping people in life-threatening situations," he said.
"The influence of these companies is enormous."
Doctors who receive funding believe they are not influenced by it.
Robert Storey, a consultant cardiologist at Sheffield involved in drug
trials, took four trips to conferences in the year to June 2007
courtesy of Astra Zeneca at a total cost of £12,000. However, he
regards these as business trips because he is asked to disseminate
research findings and are funded from the R&D budget. More junior
doctors have their funding arranged through the drug rep and must fly
economy class under Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
(ABPI) rules.
"If it is done through the local rep, who may expect some sort of
favour in exchange for that sponsorship, there is more stringent
regulation," said Dr Storey. "[Those doctors] are seeing reps on a
regular basis and although it is explicitly stated in the ABPI rules
that there shouldn't be any conflict or conditions [on the funding],
it probably does influence doctors' behaviour because they are unsure
whether they will get further sponsorship for going to further
meetings, so it is useful to them to engender good relationships with
different reps.
"One has to be careful how one judges oneself, but when you get to my
level where you are getting a lot of interest from different
companies, you can pick and choose to a certain extent. If you feel
uncomfortable about any particular request or association, you can
very easily walk away. If I'm asked to put certain points across in a
talk which I think are biased, I won't do it in the best interests of
patient care."
Storey, who makes a fuller declaration than most doctors, would prefer
to see a different system. "I certainly think it would be preferable
if sponsorship or money for travelling to meetings was independent
from the pharmaceutical companies but there is no pot of money for
providing that," he said.
Dr Willy Notcutt, an expert in pain relief at James Paget hospital in
Great Yarmouth, has recently returned from a big conference in
Glasgow. Two companies, Eli Lilly and Boehringer, paid £800 for his
travel, accommodation and registration fee. He says he has been
prescribing a drug sold jointly by the two companies but was not
"brainwashed" into it by their hospitality. He made his own
independent evaluation of the merits of the drug. "I don't give a toss
what the drug company rep says. I prescribe drugs which give benefit
to my patients," he said.
The ABPI said doctors would not be able to attend conferences where
they hear from experts in their field without sponsorship, but it was
important this was transparent.
