Medical device maker Medtronic Inc. says it paid nearly $800,000 over the past three years to a former Army surgeon accused of fabricating a study that reported positive results for one of the company's key spine products. Some of the consulting payments occurred during the time that the surgeon, Timothy R. Kuklo, was shopping his favorable study of Medtronic's Infuse bone-graft product to medical journals. The paper, ultimately published last August in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, reported advantages in healing the legs of injured soldiers when Infuse was used. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124527830694724953.html
Nothing new here Buying off doctors and research is common practice in the pharma industry. Just like the financial industry most others have their own bag of tricks to line their pockets.
new reality, i guess. Medical stocks may have past its best..... maybe start thinking of shorting that stuff ......
These implantable companies got a ruling out of a federal court that you can't win a product liability suit without proving that the product does more harm than good... quality was dropping like a rock leading up to that, they knew they were going to get that ruling out of the Bush admin... Probably Medtronic is still the best qualitywise, they have modern automated manufacturing.. whichever one Dick Cheney has, that is the brand you want to go with.
I think, going forward, we will see that the usual suspect ie Ken Lewis, Bernard Madoff on Wall Street are infinitely more honest than DRs.....and a lot less corrupt.
It is highly unethical for anyone to put their name as an author on a peer-reviewed journal paper that they did not materially contribute to. We are hearing now about the common practice of ghost writing, whereby employees of pharmaceutical companies, for example, write papers that physicians than submit to journals as if they themselves had written them and materially contributed to the content. The fabrication of data is an even worse transgression. Apparently these types of things are becoming less uncommon in the medical "profession". By contrast, in science these activities, while they do occur, are very uncommon, as anyone caught doing these things would typically be ruined for life. Integrity in the profession of science, once lost, is almost impossible to regain. Would that were true in medicine also! Sadly, medicine seems to have become rather corrupt. Perhaps there is too much money.
Bit of an over generalization there given how few are involved in this type of research. There are many in medicine, the vast majority I would say, who are for a crack down on this type of influence by the big money pharmas and who have voluntarily shut down access despite losing out on perks and benefits that big pharma brought with them. There are several articles in the journals every year about this topic and changes have been made in the last few years, for example: http://www.policymed.com/2009/03/ma...anufacture-code-of-conduct-final-version.html If you want to make medicine less about profits and more about medicine start by taking insurance companies and lawyers out of healthcare. Tort reform for a start would be the easiest and quickest way to save significant healthcare dollars and it woiuldn't cost taxpayers a penny, and yet that is low on Obama's list of priorities. If Obama wants to break the monopsony of the health insurance companies how about making it viable again for physicians to start their own practices rather than being forced to get in bed with big health care companies? Bottom line is that if you think what Obama is doing is all about improving the quality and lowering the cost of healthcare I would just point out that as his healthcare initiative ramps up the stocks of health care companies are all doing quite well. To put things in perspective, an office vist pays around $35-40 gross and you can do about 4 an hour. How many patients did this guy see? http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2009/02/28/blue_cross_ceos_pay_rose_26/ or this guy? Since first running for the US Senate in 1998, John Edwards has been the politician many doctors dislike most -- a trial lawyer who amassed an eight-figure fortune from personal injury lawsuits and became a symbol of the soaring medical malpractice insurance premiums physicians must pay.