by Daniel Carlat, MD
Recently, a former staff medical writer at a MECC (Medical Education Communication Company) anonymously alerted me to a particularly sleazy advertising tactic used by a medical writing company. This person had worked as a pharma-supported medical writer for several years, but recently quit because, “I really couldn’t stomach the ethical problems associated with writing for the pharma industry.” Recently, looking for medical writing jobs, this writer came across a company called “Emron–” no, not Enron, although the ethical standards of the sound-alike companies appear to be similar.
Here is how Emron advertises its writing services to the pharmaceutical industry:
When you’re looking to compete on quality, set your sights on Emron for top-flight health care marketing communications and brand management. We drive sales, access and reimbursement in competitive markets: our clients achieve sustained competitive advantage by creating product demand and reducing price-sensitivity.
Now, if Emron were simply an advertising company, I would have no problem with this. Ad copy writers specialize in the craft of helping companies gain market share. As a newsletter publisher, I appreciate the magic of good marketing copy when I am periodically forced to send out those annoying promotional mailers that most people toss into recycling.
But Emron does much more than advertising. It produces accredited CME programs in order to help their clients “achieve sustained competitive advantage.” As the medical writer pointed out to me, the worst part of Emron’s statement is the phrase “reducing price sensitivity.” With healthcare costs being foremost in the nations’ consciousness right now, this attitude is unconscionable. Emron is saying to pharmaceutical companies “To heck with healthcare costs! The pharmaceutical industry should not do anything to compromise their profit margins. And we will offer you our professional staff of writers (for a hefty fee) to write your CME so that doctors will prescribe more of the most expensive drugs.”
One example of Emron’s work is the The Contraception Report, a Wyeth-funded newsletter whose underlying purpose is to get doctors interested in Wyeth’s latest birth control products. That newsletter has expanded into a website called Contraception Online, which is also entirely funded by Wyeth, and which also provides advertising dressed up as CME. This site is shamefully produced by Baylor College of Medicine; I don’t know what part Emron still plays in it, as the website does a good job of making this opaque.
Recently, Murray Kopelow provided testimony in which he assured the Senate Special Committee on Aging that ACCME is the firewall between education and promotion. Emron’s toll-free number is 800-367-6613. I suggest Dr. Kopelow give them a call to help them build a better firewall.
Daniel Carlat is a psychiatrist who blogs at The Carlat Psychiatry Blog.
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{ 4 comments }
The influence of the pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers in creating the information doctors use to make clinical decisions is pervasive and unethical. The bias that is present in study designs and in how studies are reported (if they get reported – studies with unfavorable results for the drug company frequently get shelved rather than published) makes “evidence-based medicine” nothing more than a good idea that is difficult to achieve.
Read Dr. Marcia Angell’s book “The Truth About the Drug Companies.” This book should be required reading for all healthcare providers and students.
At some point the medical profession (us) has to recapture the “profession” of medicine from the business interests that now control every aspect of how healthcare is delivered. Regulating the relationships between physicians and drug companies is a good start.
Monte Ladner, M.D. – fitnessrocks
Nothing new, though. What do you think those CME classes on Lifetime Network’s “Doctor’s Sunday” were all about? Yes, there was the dual object of exposing patients to drug advertising the law otherwise restricted – and the programming disappeared with the advent of direct-to consumer advertising. Still, using the lure of CME credit to expose M.D.s to “treatment modalities” profitable to sponsors was part of the game.
Again, with evidence based medicine as the initiative, is there ANY evidence that CME requirements (State controlled and manipulated) improve patient outcomes, reduce malpractice (events or insurance rates) or otherwise benefit the public or physicians. Or perhaps, CME requirements are just another bad idea, held by alot of people for a long time (kind of like the world being flat).
Get rid of the requirements (as NY, VT, CO are wise enough to see), and get rid of the conflict of interest.
I wonder how much medical academia and medical associations are on the take from big Pharma. When you look at how distant Medical School faculty are from everyday medical care and how they have allowed outside forces to dictate what is “needed” in the medical community, it just makes you wonder. Take for instance the “medical home” concept that puts the onerous back on the poor primary care physicians to once again jump through a huge amount of hoops, to prove to everyone what they are already doing on a daily basis, so they can be paid just a little bit more.
I know for a fact not every physician who speaks at a dinner meeting is “on the take” to push a particular drug, many of them really have seen significant improvement in their patients with a particular therapy, but when associations and medical schools push a certain non-sensical agenda it just makes one wonder……
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