Selection of cancer drugs by doctors linked to payments received from pharma

NEWS

A U.S. study suggests that oncologists may be more likely to prescribe particular cancer drugs when they receive payments from the companies that make them.

COMMENT

The finding of this study is of course hardly surprising. With its annual global income expected to reach a staggering $1.4 trillion by 2020, the pharmaceutical industry is correspondingly spending vast sums of money each year on marketing and advertising its products. Making financial payments to physicians and hospitals is one of the key means via which pharma companies attempt to gain influence over them and induce them to prescribe their drugs.

The Open Payments Data website shows that, in the United States, payments made by drug companies to physicians and teaching hospitals rose from over $4 billion in 2013 to more than $8 billion in 2016. Over the four-year period between 2013 and 2016, such payments were worth a total of almost $25 billion and were received by around 906,000 physicians and 1,220 hospitals.

Worse still, the studies carried out to supposedly prove the efficacy of the pharma industry’s products are habitually rigged. To learn how we are being deliberately misled about the safety and effectiveness of drugs, read this article on our website.