Drugmakers and College Labs: Too Cozy?
Medical researchers at Harvard and Stanford have failed to disclose millions in payments from Big Pharma, an Iowa senator charges

“Grassley serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs. In early June, he released information alleging a group of Harvard psychiatrists received more than $4 million from drug companies that they didn’t report to the university. On June 23, he singled out another prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Alan Schatzberg of Stanford, saying the university should have demanded more stringent disclosure from its faculty member.

The senator alleged in the Congressional Record that Schatzberg failed to report to Stanford some payments from 2000 to 2006 from Eli Lilly (LLY) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) for consulting and other services. Grassley also chastised Schatzberg for not fully informing the university about the value of his personal stake in a drug development company he co-founded—although the psychiatrist appears to have followed Stanford’s disclosure rules.

“I am concerned that Stanford might not have been able to adequately monitor the degree of Dr. Schatzberg’s conflicts of interest,” Grassley said in a June 23 letter to Stanford President John Hennessy that was published in the Congressional Record. The senator suggested the university reexamine its disclosure policies.

Concerned about the influence of drug industry money on patient care, Grassley began investigating physicians at research universities across the country last year. The senator believes his findings will help generate support for a bill he is co-sponsoring that would require drug and medical device companies to report any payment to a physician exceeding $500. Doctors’ names and details about the payments would be posted on a Web site. “The public relies on the advice of doctors and leading researchers,” Grassley said in an e-mail to BusinessWeek. “The public has a right to know about financial relationships between those doctors and the drug companies who make the pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors.”

Amen and Amen.
Jenny Hatch