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Boston Legal: TV Drama Or Reality Show?
By Pharmalot
October 29, 2008
There is little time to watch TV on the Pharmalot corporate campus, but we were directed to a recent episode of ‘Boston Legal,’ that compelling drama about - what else? - a bunch of emotionally challenged lawyers, because there was mention of a recent pharma issue being investigated by the US Senate Finance Committee.
To wit, the committee is looking at alleged instances of undisclosed conflicts of interests involving academics who receive National Institutes of Health grants to research certain drugs and payments from drugmakers for consulting, research or speaking (back story). This is prominently noted by actress Candace Bergen, along with other matters such as pharma ties to the FDA, Congress and doctors, in a speech to a jury about a woman who suffered a heart attack after taking a drug…
“You know the death grip the pharmaceutical industry has on this country. They’ve infiltrated the FDA. A study showed that 90 percent of all FDA advisory meetings had at least one person with ties to big pharmaceuticals. And then there’s Congress. Big pharma gave members of Congress $70 million since 1990. So what does that leave us with but our doctors?
“And even they’re being bought. Between consulting fees and rebates, doctors get hundreds of millions. A famed Harvard psychiatrist helped fuel the recent boom in antipsychotics for kids. Turns out he personally took over $1.6 million from drugmakers over the past seven years. He also failed to report this income to the university, by the way. How can this be? We have no regulations. No disclosure procedures in place. Nothing to ensure that we, the patients, can know whether our doctor is on the take…It was prescribed by her own physician, perhaps because he had the financial incentive to do so…”
Any idea which Harvard University psychiatrist she could have been talking about?
(To watch, please go to this link and click on season 5, episode 6, and skip to about 27 minutes into the program, although it can take awhile to load and you may need to install a plug-in).
