"Companies target academic KOLs, or Key Opinion Leaders, in the lexicon of marketing, and woo them with invitations to sit on scientific advisory committees, or to serve as members of speakers' bureaus, which offer hefty fees for lending their prestige to a company and touting its products at scientific meetings and continuing medical education conferences," she reports.
Grassley's investigations at major universities turned up more conflicted academics in the field of psychiatry than in any other specialty. His chief investigator, Paul Thacker, developed a system where he would request conflict-of-interest records on psychiatrists from their universities and simultaneously ask drug companies to provide reports on what they paid the same researchers.
Some of the biggest names in the field appear on the list of psychiatrists who failed to disclose all their financial benefits from drug companies, which thus far includes three from Harvard, Joseph Biederman, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens; Charles Nemeroff and Zachery Stowe from Emory; Melissa DelBello at the University of Cincinnati; Alan Schatzberg, outgoing president of the American Psychiatric Association, and chair of psychiatry at Stanford; Martin Keller, a former chair of psychiatry at Brown; Karen Wagner and Augustus John Rush from the University of Texas; and Fredrick Goodwin, of George Washington University, and also the host of a radio show called "Infinite Minds," that was broadcast for years by National Pubic Radio.
All of the above "KOLs" have served as officials, or on boards and committees, of major front groups, and many have received awards, consulting and speakers fees, and research funding from various organizations.
Ensuing Outrage
The revelation that millions of dollars have been flowing from drug makers to academics in psychiatry, undetected for a decade, has drawn outrage and demands for more accountability in the entire field. "Financial transparency and full disclosure is not just an advocacy position anymore," says anti-drugging proponent, Vince Boehm. "This is rapidly becoming the order of the day."
"While the efforts of advocates were crucial in precipitating this amazing shift in public policy," he says, "our efforts were unwittingly helped by the massive greed of our opponents and the public furor that ensued."
"Events such as the Biederman scandal at Harvard and other equally disgusting problems of the same proportions have provoked public outrage," he points out.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
