Thirty doctors paid to promote drugs or educate other physicians about Pfizer’s medications have been disciplined by a state medical board or reprimanded for questionable research practices by the FDA, according to the website New Scientist.
Reporters there reviewed recently-released data from Pfizer about its payments to medical personnel.
My colleague, Erica Perez, wrote about the same data, noting that hundreds of thousands of dollars went to University of California employees.
The New Scientist team reviewed state medical board data in populous states – California, New York, Texas and Florida – to compile a sample of Pfizer-paid doctors who had been in trouble.
They are frank about their findings – the disciplined doctors only represent about 1 of 50 Pfizer experts. Still, their sources register concern with the finding:
Elizabeth Woeckner, president of Citizens for Responsible Care and Research, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, believes doctors with disciplinary records should not be educating their peers. "If it's Pfizer's position that these are respected thought-leaders, they should have clean records," she says.
The reporters single out one California physician:
Psychiatrist Mark Kosins of San Clemente, California, was paid $2500 to lecture on Geodon while on probation. His disciplinary action concerned a patient who was taken into intensive care after Kosins prescribed a combination of drugs that the medical board said "significantly increased" the chance of an adverse drug reaction.
Medical board records show that Kosins failed to provide written informed consent to the patient about the possible drug interactions. However, he did ask the patient to sign a statement affirming the he was told about the off-lable use of medications.
According to Medical board documents, Kosins was ordered to enroll in a course on prescribing practices.
The New Scientist reports that Kosins said his discipline with the state of California did not make him unfit to represent Pfizer. What's more, the discipline has nothing to do with the content of his work for Pfizer, as the patient in question was not prescribed Geodon.
A Pfizer spokeswoman told New Scientist that the company is reviewing its speaker roster:
Pfizer says that it already excludes those who are debarred from US government healthcare schemes.
"We are continually refining our review process to ensure we are selecting the most appropriate healthcare providers to partner with to educate the medical community," says company spokeswoman Kristen Neese.
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