Money and Drugs

We hear a lot these days about the drug wars in Mexico and the US. There’s another drug war being waged, the war over drugs and money. That’s the war where drug companies pay influential psychiatrists to recommend the prescriptions of potent and dangerous drugs in children, adolescents and adults. Today the little guy won a small skirmish in that war.

National Public Radio (NPR) reported today that Harvard has punished three well-known psychiatrists over failing to reveal payments from drug companies. These three doctors are accused of accepting more than $4.2 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2007 without reporting the income to Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, or the federal government. $4.2 million!  That is $1.4 million per Doctor!

What did they do for this money?  Supposedly they did research, but if that were true then they probably would’ve revealed these payments. One can only guess, but it’s useful to look at their positions on prescribing. Dr. Joseph Biederman is well-known for being a proponent of the off-label use of antipsychotic drugs to treat supposed  “bipolar illness” in young children. Much of his work is seen as encouraging the growth in these kinds of prescriptions, and his funding came from drug companies that make these drugs. Biederman and the other two psychiatrists accused also have published extensively on the use of drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also a huge growth industry in the Psycho-Pharma business.

All three doctors have been banned from taking any industry money for one year, and will be under probation for two more years after that. Good for Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital! But it would be better if Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital were more open themselves about disclosing what these doctors did, who they took money from, and whether they accepted federal grant money while not disclosing industry support which would be a violation of federal guidelines.

(I should add that most psychiatrists that I know and refer to don’t get any money from drug companies. In fact, when I ran some of the data regarding drug company’s payments to psychiatrists by a friend and colleague, he jokingly said, “Wow, I wish I had known, I could be driving a much nicer car!”  It appears that the biggest offenders are psychiatrists in academic settings or large hospital settings. Maybe we should all be asking our doctors to reveal their non-clinical funding so we know their biases.)

Copyright © 2010, 2011 Andrew Gottlieb, Ph.D. /The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions