Newsroom RX

• RxP director Allan Coukell addresses FDA Transparency Task Force 06/24/2009

  Pew Prescription Project Director Allan Coukell addresses the FDA Transparency Task Force today. The agency announced the task force earlier this month as an effort to determine what sort of information it should release to the public, and when.

  Mr Coukell's comments, available for dowload here, are given on behalf of a group of noted drug safety experts, researchers, and medical ethicists, including: Professor Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School, Dr Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard Medical School; Dr Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic; Bruce M. Psaty, MD, PhD of University of Washington (Seattle); Dr Joseph Ross, Mt Sinai School of Medicine; Dr Erick Turner, Oregon Health & Science University; Kay Dickersin, MA, PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and US Cochrane Center; Professor Art Caplan, University of Pennsylvania; Dr Howard Mann, University of Utah; and Karen Maschke, PhD, The Hastings Center.

• Vermont AG lends his support to the Physician Payment Sunshine Act 06/22/2009

  Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, who administers the nation's strongest pharmaceutical gift ban and disclosure law, lent his support this week to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act with this letter to the bill's Congressional sponsors.

  Sorrell writes that the Sunshine Act "would provide consumers with access to important information about national pharmaceutical marketing expenditures" and policymakers with "an important tool to address spiraling health costs." Sorrell supports the bill's current narrow pre-emption, which would allow the portions of Vermont's disclosure law that go beyond the Sunshine Act to remain in force.

  "It is very important to Vermont that we not be precluded from maintaining the levels of disclosure we have required to date," Sorrell writes.

  For more on the difference between Vermont's law and the proposed Physician Payments Sunshine Act, check out our comparison fact sheet.

• AMSA Scorecard: One-fifth of medical schools improved conflict-of-interest policies last year 06/16/2009

  Over one-fifth of U.S. medical schools improved their conflict-of-interest rules in the past year, yet dozens of others lag behind according to the 2009 American Medical Student Association (AMSA) PharmFree Scorecard, released today. The Scorecard, developed by AMSA and the Pew Prescription Project, finds that 45 of 149 medical schools now receive a grade of A or B for their policies governing pharmaceutical industry interaction with medical school faculty and students, compared with only 29 last year. However, for the second year, dozens of schools received grades of D or F and remain far behind the national leaders. 

  The AMSA PharmFree Scorecard (www.amsascorecard.org) offers a comprehensive national overview, as well as an in-depth, school-by-school analysis in 11 areas, including gifts and meals from industry to doctors, paid promotional speaking for industry, acceptance of free drug samples, interaction with sales representatives and industry-funded education. AMSA developed the rigorous scorecard methodology with the Pew Prescription Project, which works to promote consumer safety through reforms in the approval, manufacture and marketing of prescription drugs.

  
  “There’s no doubt that some schools are responding to scandals and pressure from lawmakers, but there is also real leadership within the medical profession,” said Allan Coukell, director of the Pew Prescription Project. “There is no excuse now for the schools that haven’t acted.”

  For more, read the press release, or check out the academic medical center toolkits.

• New England Journal of Medicine: Vermont gifts and disclosure law sets higher bar 06/11/2009

  Vermont's newly strengthened gifts ban and disclosure law, signed June 8 by Gov. Jim Douglas, sets the bar higher for state laws that aim to regulate the relationship between drug companies and doctors, according to a Perspectives piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

  "By enacting the strictest gift ban and disclosure law in the country, Vermont has raised the bar for voluntary and legislative reform efforts," writes Robert Steinbrook M.D.

  The law, which prohibits prescription drug and devicemakers from giving physicians gifts, meals, and travel payments, requires that those payments allowed -- such as drug samples -- be disclosed on a publicly accessible website.  For more on the Vermont law, read PostScript.

  The disclosure provisions in the new law are similar to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, a federal bill before Congress now. 

• Miami Herald: RxP finds drug reps doing poor job of complying with lobbying law 06/10/2009

  The Pew Prescription Project has found that drug and medical device reps are doing a poor job of complying with a regulation in Miami-Dade County that requires them to register as lobbyists in order to meet with doctors, according to the Miami Herald.

  ''Very few reps have registered; many major companies are missing; the few that registered filed little or nothing in the way of expenses -- even though you've got to know they were bringing lunch,'' Allan Coukell, director of the Pew Prescription Project, told the Herald.

  Only 57 reps filed the mandatory reports with the county in 2007, according to the Herald, though major companies including Merck, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline were absent from the list. Many of those 57 reported $0 in expenses.

  One who did report expenses was a medical device sales rep for Stryker Medical, Paul Montone, who reported spending nearly $60,000, including $38,960 allocated for entertainment. When reached by the Herald for comment, he said that Stryker had already contacted him.

  "They told me not to speak to anybody," Montone said.

  Estimates indicate the pharmaceutical and medical device industry spends between $20 and $57 billion a year on marketing.