Radio Host Has Drug Company Ties

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Radio Host Has Drug Company Ties

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/health/22radio.html?_r=1 & ref=us

By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: November 21, 2008

An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular NPR program

“The Infinite Mind” earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007

giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the

program.

Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin in 2001 during taping of “The Infinite Mind,”

his public radio program.

The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest

in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drugmakers have

been uncovered by Senator E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Dr.

Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health,

is the first news media figure to be investigated.

Dr. Goodwin’s weekly radio programs have often touched on subjects

important to the commercial interests of the companies for which he

consults. In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, he warned that

children with bipolar disorder who were left untreated could suffer

brain damage, a controversial view.

“But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin told his audience, “modern

treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe

and effective in bipolar children.”

That same day, GlaxoKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a

promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz

Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. In all, GlaxoKline paid him

more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given to

Congressional investigators show.

In an interview, Dr. Goodwin said that Bill Lichtenstein, the program’s

producer, knew of his consulting but that neither thought “getting money

from drug companies could be an issue.”

“In retrospect, that should have been disclosed,” he said.

But Mr. Lichtenstein said that he was unaware of Dr. Goodwin’s financial

ties to drugmakers and that, after an article in the online magazine

Slate this year pointed out that guests on his program had undisclosed

affiliations with drugmakers, he called Dr. Goodwin “and asked him

point-blank if he was receiving funding from pharmaceutical companies,

directly or indirectly, and the answer was, ‘No.’ ”

Asked about the contradiction, Dr. Goodwin and Mr. Lichtenstein each

stood by their versions of events.

“The fact that he was out on the stump for pharmaceutical companies was

not something we were aware of,” Mr. Lichtenstein said in an interview.

“It would have violated our agreements.”

Margaret Low , vice president of National Public Radio, said NPR

would remove “The Infinite Mind” from its satellite radio service next

week, the earliest date possible. Ms. said that had NPR been aware

of Dr. Goodwin’s financial interests, it would not have broadcast the

program.

Alspach, a spokeswoman for GlaxoKline, said, “We continue to

believe that healthcare professionals are responsible for making

disclosures to their employers and other entities, in this case National

Public Radio and its listeners.”

“The Infinite Mind” has won more than 60 journalism awards over 10 years

and bills itself as “public radio’s most honored and listened to health

and science program.” It has more than one million listeners in more

than 300 radio markets. Mr. Lichtenstein said that the last original

program was broadcast in October, that reruns have been running since

and that “the show is going off the air.”

The program has received major underwriting from the National Institutes

of Health and the National Science Foundation, both of which have

policies requiring grantees to disclose and manage conflicts of

interest. Mr. Grassley wrote letters to both agencies asking whether

disclosure rules were followed for the grants. Spokesmen for both

agencies said they were cooperating with the investigation.

Mr. Grassley is systematically asking some of the nation’s leading

researchers and doctors to provide their conflict-of-interest

disclosures, and he is comparing those documents with records of actual

payments from drug companies. The records often conflict, sometimes starkly.

In October, Mr. Grassley revealed that Dr. B. Nemeroff of Emory

University, an influential psychiatric researcher, earned more than $2.8

million in consulting arrangements with drugmakers from 2000 to 2007,

failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university

and violated federal research rules. As a result, the National

Institutes of Health suspended a $9.3 million research grant to Emory,

and Dr. Nemeroff gave up his chairmanship of Emory’s psychiatry department.

In June, the senator revealed that Dr. ph Biederman of Harvard,

whose work has fueled an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic

medicines in children, had earned at least $1.6 million from drugmakers

from 2000 to 2007, and failed to report most of this income to Harvard.

Mr. Grassley’s investigation demonstrates how deeply pharmaceutical

commercial interests reach into academic medicine, and it has shown that

universities are all but incapable of policing these arrangements. As a

result, almost every major medical school and medical society is

reassessing its relationships with makers of drugs and devices.

“We know the drug companies are throwing huge amounts of money at

medical researchers, and there’s no clear-cut way to know how much and

exactly where,” Mr. Grassley said. “Now it looks like the same thing is

happening in journalism.”

Mr. Grassley has proposed legislation that would require drugmakers to

disclose all payments of $500 or more to doctors. Eli Lilly and Merck

have promised to begin doing so next year.

Dr. Goodwin has written an influential textbook on bipolar disorder and

is an adjunct professor at Washington University. In an

interview, he blamed a changing ethical environment for any

misunderstandings with Mr. Lichtenstein about his consulting

arrangements. “More than 10 years ago, when he and I got involved in

this effort, it didn’t occur to me that my doing what every other expert

in the field does might be considered a conflict of interest,” Dr.

Goodwin said.

He defended the views he expressed in many of his radio programs and

said that, because he consulted for so many drugmakers at once, he had

no particular bias.

“These companies compete with each other and cancel each other out,” he

said.

Industry critics dismiss that view, saying that experts who consult for

drugmakers tend to minimize the value of nondrug or older drug treatments.

In the fine print of a study he wrote in 2003, Dr. Goodwin reported

consulting or speaking for nine drugmakers, including Pfizer, &

and Novartis. Mr. Grassley asked for payment information only

from GlaxoKline. Dr. Goodwin said that in recent years,

GlaxoKline paid him more than other companies.

He said that he had never given marketing lectures for antidepressant

medicines like Prozac, so he saw no conflict with a program he hosted in

March titled “Prozac Nation: Revisited.” which he introduced by saying,

“As you will hear today, there is no credible scientific evidence

linking antidepressants to violence or to suicide.”

That same week, Dr. Goodwin earned around $20,000 from GlaxoKline,

which for years suppressed studies showing that its antidepressant,

Paxil, increased suicidal behaviors.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism,

said that although concerns about news media bias were growing, few

people believed that journalists took money from those they covered.

Disclosures like those surrounding Dr. Goodwin could change that, “so

this kind of thing is very damaging,” Mr. Rosenstiel said.

--

ne Holden, MS, RD

" Ask the Parkinson Dietitian " http://www.parkinson.org/

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[Guest guest]

Senator Grassley also had a lot to do with suing Mexico in international court

to force them to accept high fructose corn syrup as an import when they didn't

want it.  Go to this link and key in " mexico corn syrup " . 

http://grassley.senate.gov/  Good for Iowa, bad for millions of Mexicans with

diabetes.

So whose hands are tied the tightest behind their backs by the worst special

interest?

Regards,

Monika M. Woolsey, MS, RD

http://www.afterthediet.com

[Guest guest]

Senator Grassley also had a lot to do with suing Mexico in international court

to force them to accept high fructose corn syrup as an import when they didn't

want it.  Go to this link and key in " mexico corn syrup " . 

http://grassley.senate.gov/  Good for Iowa, bad for millions of Mexicans with

diabetes.

So whose hands are tied the tightest behind their backs by the worst special

interest?

Regards,

Monika M. Woolsey, MS, RD

http://www.afterthediet.com