Furious Seasons

September 29, 2009

Psychiatrist Turns Down $170,000 To Promote New Antipsychotic

I think readers of this site are fairly well aware of the respect I have for Tufts University psychiatrist Danny Carlat, who's led the fight in psychiatry to clean up the APA and pharma-sponsored CMEs. My respect for him now goes up by $170,000, the amount Schering-Plough reportedly (scroll down to the bottom of the linked page) offered him to go shill for its recently-approved atypical antipsychotic Saphris and the amount which Carlat turned down.

"In a letter to doctors, Schering-Plough says 'you must present the Schering-Plough approved materials provided to you.' The company offered one psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Carlat, a Tufts University Medical School professor, up to $170,000 over two years to give 125 45-minute talks in restaurants, in his office, and by telephone and the Internet. A well-known critic of the drug industry, Carlat declined."

First, that's a ton of money for anyone to promote anything, especially a drug with pretty much no track record. Second, didn't S-P know who they were dealing with and that he'd very likely shoot them down and that their offer would become public? Lame.

For the uninitiated, Carlat's blog is here.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at September 29, 2009 12:03 AM

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Comments

Damn funny, and respect to Carlat!

I saw this story on ClinPsych, a little while back, and felt moved to comment on the sheer weirdness of it - Schering-Plough must have a set of balls like an elephant, is all I can say - the unbelievable brassneck of it! Or perhaps SP spent the last five years living on another planet, or something!

I'd like to know what SP's reaction was, when it found out that Carlat had gone public with the offer. "Ooh, that's not very professional," or something, I imagine.

Matt

Posted by: Matthew Holford at September 29, 2009 11:39 AM

Hundreds of doctors got that letter, he has made money from doing Effexor talks before, thus his counter-detailing attempt now, so yes, good for him for giving a place (his blog) to show the letter, but frankly he raised his own standards now and I fully expect him to not receive money like that again (from doing med talks paid by companies). He has set an example that way for other doctors, and has done a good job giving the topic of CME free of pharma money a good discussion. That's a fine line to walk while remaining a practicing psychiatrist, a very interesting fine line to walk. I would hope many doctors refused that money for Saphris talks, maybe others reading would chime in and let us readers know ethics still remain in their field.

Posted by: Stephany at September 29, 2009 12:22 PM