This is the side of marketing that drug companies never want you to see

In for a Wild Ride

Welcome, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg. Looks like you’re going to be the next FDA commissioner. Congratulations!

Quick question: Any prior experience handling venomous snakes? No? Ever declawed a full-grown grizzly bear? No? Nothing along those lines?

Well, in that case, you might want to pay close attention to today’s e-Alert. Because today’s topic is not the tip of an iceberg – it’s more like the tip of an entire continent of corruption and high stakes corporate power, buried just below the awareness level of the average citizen.

Biederman rides again

“Court documents reveal…”

Those have got to be three of the most chilling words for anyone who’s worked behind the scenes in a manipulative way to mislead the public. And if that person’s clandestine efforts have made him rich while making the public less safe, then someone is in pretty hot water. More like molten lava, actually.

And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

Court documents reveal that psychiatrist and Harvard professor Dr. Joseph Biederman assured Johnson & Johnson executives that studies Dr. Biederman was involved in would end up showing benefits of two different antipsychotic drugs made by J&J. Dr. Biederman was director of the Johnson & Johnson Center for Pediatric Psychopathology Research at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In both studies the drugs were tested on children. And, as promised, both studies eventually showed benefits for children.

Of course, many doctors and drug companies have carried on long-time love affairs that were lucrative for all parties involved. That’s no surprise to e-Alert readers. But Dr. Biederman is a unique case.

In the e-Alert “Influence By the Numbers” (6/24/08), I first told you about the adventures of Dr. Biederman, who accepted more than $1.5 million from J&J and other drug companies between 2000 and 2007. You’ve got to do some serious “consulting” to collect well over $200,000 per year, year after year.

But what really sets Dr. Biederman apart from other drug-company-friendly docs is the way he totally transformed his area of expertise.

Back up the money truck, darling

In a 2007 article that appeared in the Boston Globe, Dr. Lawrence Diller noted that child psychiatry practitioners had grown afraid of Dr. Biederman.

Dr. Diller: “To politely challenge Biederman in public is to risk public retribution and ridicule from him and his team. Also academic researchers in child psychiatry risk losing their funding if they criticize this darling of the pharmaceutical industry…”

And here’s how Dr. B. became a “darling”: He aggressively broadened the definition of bipolar disorder so that many more children would be considered candidates for therapy with antipsychotic drugs. According to PBS’ Frontline, there was a 4,000 percent increase in the number of children diagnosed as bipolar over the decade that Biederman and colleagues expanded the concept of the disorder.

That’s not a typo: 4,000 percent.

You’ve got to be an enormously powerful rainmaker to turnover numbers like that.

How powerful? We get a hint from a recent deposition in which Dr. Biederman was asked his rank at Harvard. Dr. B. answered that he was a full professor. And when asked by an attorney what was higher than that, he answered: “God.”

This is the sort of personality-type the new FDA commissioner will have to rein in on a regular basis. I honestly wish Dr. Hamburg the best. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Sources:
“Drug Maker Told Studies Would Aid It, Papers Say” Gardiner Harris, New York Times, 3/20/09, nytimes.com
“Misguided Standards of Care” Dr. Lawrence Diller, The Boston Globe, 6/19/07, boston.com