Doctors Push Drugs for Dollars

A California doctor who was paid $950 this year to speak for AstraZeneca was placed on five years’ probation by regulators in 2009 after having a breakdown, threatening suicide and spending time in a psychiatric hospital after police used a Taser on him. He said he’d been self-treating with samples of AstraZeneca’s anti-psychotic drug Seroquel, medical board records show.

Other paid speakers had been disciplined by their employers or warned by the federal government. At least 15 doctors lost staff privileges at various hospitals, including one New Jersey doctor who had been suspended twice for patient care lapses and inappropriate behavior. Other doctors received FDA warning letters for research misconduct such as failing to get informed consent from patients.

Pharma companies say they rely primarily on a federal database listing those whose behavior in some way disqualifies them from participating in Medicare. This database, however, is notoriously incomplete.

The industry’s primary trade group says its voluntary code of conduct is silent about what, if any, behavior should disqualify physician speakers.

“We look at it from the affirmative — things that would qualify physicians,” said Diane Bieri, general counsel and executive vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Some physicians with disciplinary records say their past misdeeds do not reflect on their ability to educate their peers.

Family medicine physician Jeffrey Unger was put on probation by California’s medical board in 1999 after he misdiagnosed a woman’s breast cancer for 2½ years. She received treatment too late to save her life. In 2000, the Nevada medical board revoked Unger’s license for not disclosing California’s action.

As a result, Unger said, he decided to slow down and start listening to his patients. Since then, he said, he has written more than 130 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on diabetes, mental illness and pain management.

“I think I’ve more than accomplished what I’ve needed to make this all right,” he said. During 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, Lilly paid Unger $87,830. He said he also is a paid speaker for Novo Nordisk and Roche, two companies that have not disclosed payments.

The drug firms, Unger said, “apparently looked beyond the record.”

Companies make their own experts

Last summer, as drug giant Glaxo battled efforts to yank its blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia from the market, cardiologist Hal Roseman of Nashville, Tenn., worked the front lines.

At an FDA hearing, he borrowed David Letterman’s shtick to deliver a “Top Five” list of reasons to keep the drug on the market despite evidence it caused heart problems. He faced off against a renowned Yale cardiologist and Avandia critic on the PBS NewsHour, arguing that the drug’s risks had been overblown.

“I still feel very convinced in the drug,” Roseman said with relaxed confidence. The FDA severely restricted access to the drug last month citing its risks.

Roseman is not a researcher with published peer-reviewed studies to his name. Nor is he on the staff of a top academic medical center or in a leadership role among his colleagues.