Revealed: Pfizer's payments to censured doctors

[n2doc]

16:18 22 April 2010 by Peter Aldhous and Jim Giles
They are billed as "healthcare professionals who spend years building expertise in their fields". Using materials firmly grounded in science, they educate their peers in the risks and benefits of drugs.

This is how Pfizer, the pharmaceuticals giant, describes the experts it hires to lead educational forums in which doctors are lectured on the use of its products.

Yet New Scientist has found that some of Pfizer's experts have been disciplined for deficiencies in patient care, while others have been reprimanded for how they conducted drug research trials.

The findings add to a growing controversy surrounding the pharmaceutical industry's efforts to market drugs by influencing patterns of prescribing.

more

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18806-revealed-pfizers-payments-to-censured-doctors.html

[mike_c]

1. some proportion will likely be good physicians, and some will be paid shills....

No surprise there, I don't think.

[rfranklin]

2. If they are touting Pfizer drugs they are all shills...

that is the meaning of the word.

[n2doc]

3. kick n/t

[BlueIris]

4. Ew. nt