In light of Serono money-laundering news, a repost.


Pharmaceutical "Payola"
NOTE:  This article is on payola from drug companies to prescribing doctors.  It is not questioning the need for certain drugs in specific situations.  It is about how drug companies influence doctors with money.  Payola should be illegal.  Payola is illegal for the music industry....it needs to be out-lawed for pharma.     Here's a scary fact.  One drug, Lipitor, made MORE money in 2009 than the entire recording industry in the US.  ONE DRUG.  The recording industry made $4.6 billion.  Lipitor, a cholesterol lowering drug (that is often prescribed before diet and exercise) made $5.4 billion.  This was posted by a musician friend of Jeff and mine on FB today....he was deeply disturbed by this fact.  Me too.   Back when I was a kid, record labels sometimes engaged in Payola--from the words pay and victrola--labels would give radio DJs sums of cash, gifts, and trips in order to encourage them to play their records on air.  It was illegal then....why not now?   Pharmaceutical payola--in the form of speaking fees, honoraria, cash incentives, trip and gifts are given every day around the world.  Drug companies give payola to medical professionals to get them to play their drugs---to write a prescription--without suggesting diet, exercise and preventative measures first.  The prescription pad comes out.  Jeff had slightly high cholesterol and his doctor suggested Lipitor.  He asked her if he could try diet and exercise first.  Sure enough, he got his numbers to normal within 3 months.  Why didn't his doctor suggest this?   Here's a terrific editorial on pharmaceutical payola-- http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/17/9019 Here's a section from this editorial on Neurontin...one of the many drugs my husband's neuro prescribed (which he threw out)   "One eye-opening case that Petersen details in Our Daily Meds concerns Neurontin, a mediocre drug for epilepsy that Warner-Lambert illegally peddled as an unapproved treatment for bipolar disorder, migraines, attention deficit disorder in children and other conditions. The drug does not work for most of these conditions. Many persons were injured by taking excessive doses of Neurontin, and many others wasted money and emotional energy on hopeless Neurontin treatment strategies. Warner-Lambert ultimately paid $430 million to settle criminal and civil charges related to Neurontin marketing, but Petersen says that, even so, the illegal marketing scheme was clearly profitable for Warner-Lambert (and Pfizer, which acquired Warner-Lambert in 2000).   Petersen's account of the Neurontin nightmare draws heavily on a whistleblower, David Franklin. She summarizes the central theme of the story Franklin revealed: "The company got doctors to prescribe the drug for all these experimental uses by paying them. They paid physicians to give speeches to other physicians at restaurants or hotels or resorts. The doctors not only enjoyed a nice meal or a weekend vacation, they often also received a $500 check for attending. The physicians giving lectures at these parties were often trained by the drug company's ad firm to describe how Neurontin could work for conditions like bipolar. ... The company tracked the doctors' prescriptions before and after these dinners or weekend retreats. The executives saw how well it worked."   In the meantime, a ban on Pharma gifts to doctors would be a modest step forward. In the United States, notes Petersen, "radio disc jockeys can't take cash from music companies. But when it comes to something like medicines -- which mean life or death for people -- doctors can take as much money as they want from the drug companies. We need a law to stop that."   We need that law....today.   This is what we're up against.   The music industry has changed since Jeff and I started as professional musicians.  Music is available on line, there really isn't radio anymore.  The industry has become democratically altered by the internet.  We have all different types of music available to us at any time, our choice, our dollar.  Maybe the internet can do the same to the pharmaceutical industry...  Joan   http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/100710lipitor