off-label drugs | The Ethical Nag

The drug company Novartis has agreed to pay $422.5 million in criminal and civil penalties for promoting illegal use of its epilepsy drug Trileptaland five other Novartis drugs, the U.S. Department of Justice announced recently. The cases charged the company with promoting off-label use of Trileptal for medical conditions it had not been tested or approved to treat, and also for its illegal targeted marketing efforts.

The marketing efforts that prosecutors took exception to included paying kickbacks to physicians to encourage them to prescribe more of these drugs.

Now, that word kickbacks is a loaded word, and one that I’d imagine the docs who have been accepting this drug money would not likely ever use themselves. Continue reading →

blackberry office

A psychiatrist, originally skeptical about prescribing the powerful anti-psychotic drug Seroquel to his patients, becomes a super-prescriber who is rewarded by the drug’s manufacturer with generous $1,500 speaking engagements.
a neurologist jokes that she doles out so much Seroquel for her migraine patients that the drug company probably thinks she’s a psychiatrist; she is rewarded with free trips to Scotland and Spain by the company.
a busy physician has no problem leaving patients to stew in the waiting room while he listens to a pitch about Seroquel from a drug rep. “Dr had 3 patients waiting but did sit down with me x 25 minutes,” the rep wrote in her daily call notes. Continue reading →