No checks on drug companies bribing docs

[Guest guest]

In what seems to be a case of giving the fox the job of guarding the henhouse, the government has decided to curb the practice of bribing doctors for promoting drugs by allowing pharmaceutical companies to self-regulate rather than have a legislation to tackle the menace. 

This is despite the fact that more than a quarter of the members of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) an association mainly of multinationals which is estimated to account for 70% of the drug market in India are subsidiaries of companies that have been penalised in the US for illegally promoting various drugs through inducements for doctors. 

The latest to be penalised is the pharma giant Pfizer, which shelled out a whopping $2.3 billion in one of the biggest healthcare fraud settlements. The charge against Pfizer was that it promoted drugs for usages not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by inducing doctors to prescribe the drugs by wining and dining them and sending them for exotic trips. 

Another big player, Eli Lilly, was fined $1.42 billion at the beginning of the year for illegally promoting a drug, Zyprexa, by funding continuing medical education of doctors through millions of dollars in grants to push them to prescribe the drugs for unapproved use. 

Glaxosmithkline (GSK) has reserved $400 million to settle charges of promoting unapproved use of drugs and of kickbacks to doctors related to several products. Yet another OPPI member, Bristol-Myers Squibb, had to pay $515 million in 2007 for giving illegal remuneration to physicians and other healthcare providers in the form of consulting fees, other programs and travel to luxurious resorts to get them to promote BMS drugs. 

Of the 53 pharma members of the OPPI, over 25% have figured in such cases in the US. This is despite the fact that Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which includes many of these penalised companies, already has a voluntary Code on Interactions with Health Professionals which explicitly prohibits members from giving illegal inducements to doctors to get them to prescribe their products. Many of these companies also claim to have their own stringent ethical guidelines applicable globally regarding interactions with health professionals. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/No-checks-on-drug-companies-bribing-docs/articleshow/5015738.cms