Two German doctors are convicted of taking drug company bribes
Two doctors in Germany have been convicted of bribery for accepting money from a drug firm for prescribing its drug.BMJ 2010, 341,c6359
12/11/2010
Drug companies to declare all payments to doctors from 2012
Changes to the UK drug industry code of practice (ABPI) will require drug companies to make an annual declaration of how much money they have paid to doctors for use of their services. The changes will see each drug company declare the amount and the number of times payments were made to doctors, including speaker fees, advisory boards and consultancy, and sponsorship for attendance at meetings. The code does not however require individual doctors to be named.Another change to he code which comes into effect on 1st Jan 2011, will ban the industry from providing branded promotional items such as pens to healthcare professionals. Health professionals may still get pens and paper at conferences but this will not bear the name of any medicine, just the company name.BMJ 2010, 341, c6290
11/11/2010
Roche fined for breaching promotion code
An Australian subsidiary of Roche has been fined £124,200 for offering a regional public health organisation funding for a nursing position in exchange for doctors in the region prescribing its hepatitis drug Pegasys.
BMJ 2010, 341, c6232
GSK agrees to pay fine for badly made drugs
GSK is to pay $750m to settle cirimal and civil complaints that the company had for year knowingly sold adulterated formulations of four drugs it produced in Puerto Rico.
Experts warn of rationing by GPs under new drug scheme
Andrew Lansley, health secretary, has repearted stated his intention of moving the NHS to a value based pricing for drugs in the NHS. This means the government will negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical companies according to the therapeutic benefits they will bring to patients. However, this means that the role of NICE in ruling whether drugs should be made available to patients on the NHS will be reductant. In addition, this move will lead to GPs having to take on the role of rationing drugs and is likely to lead to a postcode lottery.
BMJ 2010, 341, c6240
01/11/2010
Dollars for Docs - Drug companies accursed of using unsuitable doctors for promotion
The drug companies pay hundreds of doctors who have been disciplined for ethical breaches or had their medical licences revolked as speakers and consultants says a ProPublica report. The reporters created a searchable database of payments to doctors since 2009. The report can be found at http://www.propublica.org/article/profiles-of-the-top-earners-in-dollar-for-docs and the database at http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/.
BMJ 2010; 341:c6026