WSJ on medical education

[Susan Ohanian <susano@GMAVT.NET>]

The WSJ article below shows one way education is like medicine--except
educators don't get filet mignon--unless they're buying the textbooks for a
district--or serve on a State School Board.
See "Corporate Scriptwriters Call State School Boards' Tunes"
Quick Summary: Studying conferences programs reveals a lot of info about
Standardisto bedfellows

My deconstruction of the National Association of State Boards of Education
2002 Annual Conference program appeared in the November Substance and on my
website--under "Commentary."

December 4, 2002

When Doctors Go to Class,
Industry Often Foots the Bill
Lectures Tend to Feature Pills
But Drug Firms Deny Influence
By SCOTT HENSLEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Nearly 400 doctors crowded the Astor Ballroom at the Marriott Marquis in
Times Square last June for a free dinner of filet mignon and red snapper and
a lecture on depression drugs.

The speaker, psychiatrist Jay Fawver, cued his computer slide show and
loosened up the audience like a Borscht Belt pro: "Ever hear of Prozac
poop-out?" Many chuckled at the reference to long-term patients on the
famous antidepressant who relapse. Near the end of the talk, Dr. Fawver
brought up an experimental medicine called duloxetine, which is designed to
help doctors treat difficult depression patients. Duloxetine's maker, Eli
Lilly & Co., paid for the dinner and lecture. It hopes to get approval next
year to sell the drug under the name Cymbalta.
Best of all for the doctors: The dinner and talk counted as two hours of
credit toward their annual requirements for continuing medical education, or
CME.

Courses such as this one are supposed to help doctors keep pace with
advances in medical knowledge. Once put on primarily by nonprofit medical
societies and academic institutions, the courses increasingly are sponsored
by drug companies and organized by for-profit medical-education firms. The
risk: the courses tilt toward promoting the corporate sponsors' drugs.

Drug-company interest in CME has been building for years, but it has
intensified since the industry adopted a voluntary code of sales conduct in
July that emphasizes educating, rather than entertaining, physicians. The
code bars currying doctors' favor with resort junkets, tickets to sports
events or free tanks of gas -- all gambits used in the past. In response,
manufacturers are stepping up their involvement in continuing education.

Growing Reliance
The growing reliance on corporate sponsorship also means that drug companies
rather than doctors often determine the overall agenda for CME. Doctors are
hearing a lot more about medical conditions that can be treated with
expensive brand-name drugs and less about subjects from which manufacturers
can't profit, such as psychotherapy, autism and domestic violence, some
medical educators say.

The educational firms that now run many CME courses depend on the goodwill
of the drug companies for their livelihood, says Arnold Relman, a former
editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Education providers "are not
going to be paid if they don't speak well of the companies' products," Dr.
Relman adds -- an assertion the providers deny.

Thirty-six states require doctors to take continuing education to maintain
their medical licenses. In those states, the average requirement is about 27
hours of lectures or seminars a year. Drug companies now underwrite many
courses offered by nonprofit universities and professional societies, as
well as by for-profit companies. At the typical medical school, more than
40% of funding for CME comes from commercial sponsors, compared with 17% in
1994, according to the nonprofit Society for Academic Continuing Medical
Education.
Government and industry guidelines forbid manufacturers from directly
controlling the courses. But there isn't aggressive enforcement, and there
are plenty of ways to influence them. Drug makers, for instance, may suggest
speakers as long as the education provider has the final say.

In a so-called whistle-blower lawsuit pending in federal court in Boston, a
former employee of Warner-Lambert Co. has accused the company of
hand-picking speakers and signing off on their presentations about
unapproved uses of Neurontin, an epilepsy drug. The courses, given around
the country, were supposed to have been prepared by independent education
providers.

The suit claims that by means of its role in continuing education, among
other actions, Warner-Lambert caused doctors to write inappropriate
prescriptions for Neurontin through at least 1998. That, in turn, cost the
Medicaid insurance program for the poor hundreds of millions of dollars, the
suit claims. The federal government has joined the suit as a co-plaintiff,
seeking unspecified compensation for the alleged overpayments.

Pfizer Inc. acquired Warner-Lambert in 2000. Spokeswoman Mariann Caprino
says Pfizer won't comment on activities at Warner-Lambert "many years before
we were involved. However, all of Pfizer's CME programs are conducted within
the appropriate guidelines and are based on solid, scientific research."

Drug companies are prohibited from promoting their medicines for uses other
than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration. CME courses, by
contrast, may discuss unapproved uses of commercially available drugs, which
doctors are free to prescribe as they see fit, or experimental drugs. The
courses thus potentially become a backdoor way for companies to get the word
out more broadly about their products.

For drug giant Lilly, that was one benefit of the CME course last year at
the Times Square Marriott. Through this and similar courses, the
Indianapolis-based company helped generate buzz about Cymbalta, the
depression drug, long before its expected approval next year.

Lilly's goal in such courses "is to disseminate scientific information in an
objective and nonpromotional way," says spokesman Robert Smith. Lilly didn't
control the content of the depression course, and attendees heard about
multiple products, as well as the science underlying depression treatments,
Mr. Smith says. All of these attributes are required by the Accreditation
Council for Continuing Medical Education, a nonprofit group whose board is
drawn from medical associations and hospital groups.

Optima Educational Solutions, a closely held company outside Chicago, was
paid more than $2 million to organize the depression lecture series. Angelo
Grossi, the company's president, says he has had "an explosion of orders"
from drug makers since July, when the new marketing code went into effect.

Optima put together the depression curriculum, including the standardized
set of slides used by lecturers. The small company also obtained
accreditation, found speakers and rounded up attendees. Optima says its
depression course ran for five months, ending in September, with a dozen
doctors delivering talks to a total of about 5,400 people in cities from
coast to coast.

The medical-education company says all of its courses are prepared by
leading medical experts but aren't reviewed or approved beforehand by Lilly
or other sponsoring companies. Mr. Grossi says Lilly's drug deserved on the
merits to be included in the depression course. He also says he thinks he
would get future business from Lilly even if he didn't include its drug
because Lilly had funded previous Optima programs that didn't include a drug
Lilly was selling.

Dr. Fawver, the Fort Wayne, Ind., psychiatrist who gave the Times Square
talk, says that while Lilly's new drug was featured in the set of slides
Optima provided, he would have discussed the medicine anyway when surveying
the latest treatments. He says his talk wasn't scripted by either Optima or
Lilly. Optima says that only 3% of the attendees questioned the course's
objectivity in a survey the company administered afterward.

Optima declines to say what it paid Dr. Fawver. He says the gig was a
financial "break-even situation" for him, given the patient fees he had to
forgo back home. Lectures generally pay from $1,000 to $5,000 or more each.
The pleasure of teaching and the chance to help colleagues stay current draw
him to CME, Dr. Fawver says.

Blurring the Lines
Psychiatry is a particularly hot area for industry-sponsored courses because
companies are coming out with many new drugs in the field and new uses of
existing ones. The lines between education and promotion can blur in other
specialties, too. AstraZeneca PLC paid bonuses to sales representatives
based on how many doctors they recruited for a class on gastrointestinal
disease it sponsored in recent months, a former AstraZeneca employee says.

AstraZeneca spokeswoman Rachel Bloom-Baglin says, "To the extent that such a
field-initiated contest may have occurred, it was not within the company's
policy," which forbids financial incentives to sales reps to boost
attendance. "We are not aware of any such contests at the present time," she
adds.

The free half-day course on gastro-esophageal reflux disease, the kind of
serious heartburn that can cause permanent damage, was held at 32 hotels
across the country through last month. AstraZeneca, maker of heartburn drugs
Prilosec and Nexium, paid the Cleveland Clinic, a top teaching hospital, to
organize the course, as well as related self-study programs. The cover of a
brochure describing the course that was mailed to doctors across the country
is purple, the same color as the company's heartburn capsules and its
corporate logo.
Only 1% of doctors participating in the Cleveland Clinic class on
gastrointestinal disease supported by AstraZeneca reported detecting any
commercial bias, William Carey, the clinic's continuing-education director,
says.

Institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic need industry financial support
because "expenses for most CME activities exceed the amount that can
reasonably be met by registration fees," Dr. Carey says. As recently as the
mid-1990s, most of the courses ran primarily on fees, which doctors can
deduct from their income for tax purposes.

But many physicians have grown accustomed to industry-subsidized education
and now resist paying even modest amounts to attend classes. That makes it
tough for universities and hospitals to charge doctors the full freight for
course costs. As a result, these institutions now routinely take money from
the drug industry.
Last year, direct commercial support for continuing medical education was
$569 million, up 22% from 2000, according to the accreditation council. When
spending on related exhibits and advertising is included, the industry share
of support stood at $729 million last year, or 62%, of the $1.18 billion
total spent for continuing medical education, according to the accreditation
council. Admission fees and expenditures by universities and other
nonprofits provide the balance.

Drug-company support for the courses began growing in the 1980s. In the
early 1990s, an explosion of boondoggles offering credit became the subject
of Senate hearings. That led to some reform, including stricter
accreditation requirements and in some cases higher-quality courses.

The FDA, concerned about the promotion of drugs for unapproved uses, laid
out guidelines in the early 1990s to prevent companies from using the
educational system as a marketing tool. The main criteria: that courses be
accredited and that drug companies not control course preparation, delivery
or content. The agency sent warning letters to some companies that had
supported the research of doctors who later gave continuing medical
education speeches about off-label uses of drugs.

But First Amendment free-speech litigation in the 1990s spearheaded by the
Washington Legal Foundation, a free-market advocacy group funded by drug
makers and other manufacturers, successfully curtailed certain FDA efforts
to restrict drug-company communication with doctors. The upshot is that the
agency hasn't aggressively enforced its own guidelines.

Audience Laughing
Many physicians view industry-sponsored courses -- even those that follow
all the rules -- as verging on infomercials. Diana Koziupa, a psychiatrist
at the Pennsylvania Foundation, a group practice in Sellersville, Pa.,
recalls some of her audiences laughing during a lecture series she presented
in late 1999 and 2000. Glaxo Wellcome PLC sponsored the course, and some
attendees were audibly amused when the treatment of choice in a series of
hypothetical depression cases turned out every time to be Wellbutrin, which
is made by Glaxo.
"We were trying to make it less of an advertisement for Wellbutrin, and we
didn't succeed," Dr. Koziupa says. That was because the obligatory slide
presentation -- which was prepared by Projects in Knowledge, a Secaucus,
N.J., medical-education company hired by Glaxo -- put a heavy emphasis on
the drug.
For more health coverage, visit the Online Journal's Health Industry Edition
at wsj.com/health8 and receive daily health e-mails9.


Still, she says her talk wasn't scripted by either Projects in Knowledge or
the drug company. "I talk around the slides, as most speakers do. It's not
just Vanna White turning the letters," Dr. Koziupa says. She continues to
deliver industry-sponsored presentations to supplement her income and
because she enjoys lecturing. She says she can't recall what she was paid
for the depression talks.

Glaxo merged with SmithKlineBeecham PLC in late 2000. GlaxoSmithKline PLC
spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne says the manufacturer wasn't involved in
decisions about the Wellbutrin presentation. "The contract with the vendor
requires that it be independent medical education, and we believe this
program was conducted accordingly," she says. GlaxoSmithKline declines to
say what it paid Projects In Knowledge. The education company says in a
written statement that physicians who attended the lectures unanimously
praised them for being informative and "free from commercial bias."

David Stout, president of GlaxoSmithKline's U.S. pharmaceuticals group, says
CME offers a valuable way to communicate with doctors. "I've always held CME
in very high regard," he says. Having independent educational companies
prepare the courses makes the classes credible, he says. And doctors, he
adds, "need the CME credit."

Some academic doctors say industry dollars are essential. "For academic
medicine to not avail itself of the resources of the pharmaceutical industry
and private sector would be foolish," says Jeffrey Lieberman, professor of
psychiatry at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and a paid
speaker for a number of industry-sponsored CME courses. "It would be like
major sports saying they won't take advertising from Nike.
"The problem is where CME meets marketing," Dr. Lieberman says. That's a
growing concern, he says, but the "bedrock of professional propriety" among
physicians, combined with existing guidelines for commercial sponsorship,
will protect against distortion of CME.

In some quarters, a just-say-no stance toward industry-funded education is
coalescing. "We docs make very respectable incomes, and we should be able to
budget" for CME, without industry support, says Frederick Sierles, a
psychiatrist at Finch University of Health Sciences, in North Chicago, Ill.
Five years ago, before he took over responsibility for CME in his
department, Dr. Sierles says industry-sponsored speakers were allowed. As a
result, continuing education focused on drugs sold by the corporate
sponsors, rather than other important areas, such as psychotherapy, medical
ethics and economics. Now, Dr. Sierles says his department doesn't do any
industry-sponsored CME. Instead, it budgets about $8,000 a year to pay
modest fees and expenses for monthly guest lectures.
Write to Scott Hensley at scott.hensley@wsj.com10.
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1038953904187251993.djm,00.html




http://www.susanohanian.org

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