21-10-2010, 09:19 AM
(This post was last modified: 21-10-2010, 09:23 AM by Peter Lemkin.)
A new investigation has found over 17,000 doctors nationwide have received payments from seven major pharmaceutical companies to promote their products. According to ProPublica and several other media outlets, the number includes more than 380 doctors and other healthcare professionals who took in over $100,000 this year and in 2009. The actual number is believed to be far higher, because over seventy other drug companies haven’t disclosed their payments to doctors.
The folks at ProPublica do trustworthy journalism based on a really strong ethical practice.
They just launched a big report which is about fees paid by pharmaceutical companies to doctors to promote their drugs, done with five leading media partners (NPR, Consumer Reports, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Nightly Business Report on PBS.)
The story explains how drug companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars resulting in nearly seven billion dollars in fines so far. They often pay doctors with dubious records, and sometimes in violation of FDA regulations.
Beyond this, ProPublica's database of 17,000 names is searchable by doctor, enabling patients across the country to see if their doctor may be taking money that could be influencing decisions on what to prescribe. That's a big deal right there for journalism in general, allowing others to dig up facts that affect us.
The folks at ProPublica do trustworthy journalism based on a really strong ethical practice.
They just launched a big report which is about fees paid by pharmaceutical companies to doctors to promote their drugs, done with five leading media partners (NPR, Consumer Reports, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Nightly Business Report on PBS.)
The story explains how drug companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars resulting in nearly seven billion dollars in fines so far. They often pay doctors with dubious records, and sometimes in violation of FDA regulations.
Beyond this, ProPublica's database of 17,000 names is searchable by doctor, enabling patients across the country to see if their doctor may be taking money that could be influencing decisions on what to prescribe. That's a big deal right there for journalism in general, allowing others to dig up facts that affect us.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
