Doctors Paid Millions to Shill for Big Pharma

How the pharmaceutical industry bribes medical professionals.

ProPublica / By Tracy Weber, Charles Ornstein

  

Update Mar. 11, 2013, 4:55 pm: This post has been updated to reflect a response by Dr. Vladimir Maletic to questions from ProPublica.

Dr. Jon W. Draud, the medical director of psychiatric and addiction medicine at two Tennessee hospitals, pursues some eclectic passions. He’s bred sleek Basenji hunting dogs for show. And last summer, the Tennessee State Museum featured “African Art: The Collection of Jon Draud.”

But the Nashville psychiatrist is also notable for a professional pursuit: During the last four years, the 47-year-old Draud  has earned more than $1 million for delivering promotional talks and consulting for seven drug companies.

By a wide margin, Draud’s earnings make him the best-paid speaker in ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database, which has been updated to include more than $2 billion in payments from 15 drugmakers for promotional speaking, research, consulting, travel, meals and related expenses from 2009 to 2012.

Drug Companies Hide Trial Results

Dear Reader,

Everyone who takes a prescription drug is stepping into the unknown. I mean EVERYONE. Including your doctor.

Your doctor MIGHT have a clue about the drugs he's prescribing. But that's the best you can expect. A clue.

That's because almost nobody outside of the inner circle of drug company employees gets a complete look at drug company trials.

Here's how trial transparency crusader Dr. Ben Goldacre puts it in a recent New York Times article… If you flip a coin, but hide it every time it comes up tails, it looks like the result is always heads.

Silence is golden