Drug Money
PHARMACEUTICAL SCANDAL BITES HARVARD IN THE ASS
By Mande Wilkes
FITSNews – June 9, 2008 – We hear a lot about doctors receiving kickbacks from pharmaceutical giants for prescribing certain medications – a worrisome trend because the implication is that a prescription is a service to the pharm company rather than to the patient.
What we’ve heard almost nothing about are the kickbacks received by university professors for consulting for these pharmaceutical companies.
An investigation by Iowa Senator Charles Grassley revealed that top Harvard researchers failed to report – and in some cases outright lied about – the money they were paid as research consultants.
As jaded as we are about the state of the medical establishment, we didn’t even flinch at this little appearance of impropriety. Until, that is, we realized that these researchers are renowned child psychiatrists, and the studies for which they consulted were regarding kids’ responses to anti-psychotic drugs.
Now, Google reveals a ton of both anecdotal and statistical information about children’s responses to these drugs, and the portrayal is almost always negative. How, then, has there been a 40-fold increase in the use of these drugs from 1994 to 2003?
Since we’re not talking about peanuts here – three top researchers made over $4 million among them since 2000 – it would seem that the astronomical rise in the use of these drugs is attributable to the work of these Harvard researchers.
Dr. Joseph Biederman, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, and Dr. Thomas Spencer are at the top of the child psychiatry food chain, and as such, people – and the FDA – listen when they speak.
But when drug companies pay them to speak, they become nothing more than an extension of the company, a corporate spokesman – a fact that is obfuscated by their respectable titles, mile-long CV’s, and most of all by their association with the top university in the world.
By lying about their pharm revenue, these Harvard doctors have basically admitted their corrupt allegiances.
