Several months ago, I met a young woman who was the chief lobbyist for a well know anti-industry group. In our discussion she mentioned that her group was in favor of the revised Physician Payment Sunshine Act, because they see it as a first step in their march towards eliminating all pharmaceutical and device marketing. She explained how this data would be useful in embarrassing physicians not to work with industry. At the time I shrugged off the comments due to her youth.
This week Eli Lilly announced that as a company they are going to disclose payments to physicians. At this announcement one who expect accolades from those who have been saying “we want disclosure”.
Senator Kohl the sponsor of the physician payment sunshine act stated: "Eli Lilly is leading the charge for transparency in the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors by fulfilling the obligations of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act before it has been enacted," and "It takes a lot of courage to be the first. They have made a principled decision that I believe will benefit both their business and the consumers of their products."
So what did the anti-Pharma crowd do, did they applaud the effort, like any reasonable person, absolutely not, they even went so far as to accuse Eli Lilly of atrocities.
In one of the most conflicted and prolific of the pharma critics, Carlat’s Psychiatry Blog Eli Lilly: Ethical Confusion Continues Dr. Carlat writes:
So why do I say Eli Lilly is "ethically confused"? Because they still shamelessly participate in marketing deception. They hid risks of Zyprexa from doctors long after they knew about them, and still deny that this was wrong. They continue to fund a malpractice insurance company, PRMS, to provide sham risk management education to psychiatrists in an effort to prevent them from switching patients to less toxic antipsychotics. In this particularly ugly marketing tactic, they are paying attorneys to do their "education," payments which would remain hidden even under their new disclosure policy.
The blog is a case study in that the true goal of the anti-medical manufactures crowd is:
A) To stop all new drugs from coming on the market
B) If this drug slips by the FDA disavow and discredit any benefit that a new drug or device may bring
C) Stop all pharmaceutical marketing.
Dr. Carlat is influential, when I pulled the records from a anti industry marketing hearing at one of the states, it was full of blog postings and articles from Dr. Carlat.
The words of Dr. Carlat once again confirm their true agenda and that no good deed goes unpunished.