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Pharma Fond of Fraud-Committing Physicians

Sunday's New York Times had a mindbending article about the way drugs are tested in this country. Apparently, doctors who have been disciplined for fraud are finding second careers running clinical trials for drug companies. One such doctor, before being hired directly by drug companies, was cited by the FDA for violating protocol in every study he managed! When a suicidal patient refused to be enrolled in one of his trials, he discharged the patient from his hospital—and the patient committed suicide shortly thereafter. It's as if facility with fraud is a bona fide occupational qualification for running a pharma trial.

Meanwhile, take a wild guess what many of the other doctors hired to run drug trials were disciplined for... if you said "overprescribing," you win!

Gene Carbona, who left Merck on good terms in 2001 as a regional sales manager after 12 years in drug sales, said the only thing the company considered when hiring doctors to give marketing lectures was “the volume or potential volume of prescribing that doctor could do.” ... Mr. Carbona, now executive director of sales for The Medical Letter, which reviews drugs, said that had he known that a doctor had a disciplinary record for excessive prescribing, “I would have been more inclined to use them as a speaker.”