Doctor-drugmaker ties: Psychiatrist received nearly $500,000 from drug manufacturer

[n2doc]

By Christina Jewett, ProPublica and Sam Roe, Tribune reporter
November 11, 2009
Executives inside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca faced a high-stakes dilemma.

On one hand, Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein was bringing the company a small fortune in sales and was conducting research that made one of its most promising drugs look spectacular.

On the other, some worried that his research findings might be too good to be true.

As Reinstein grew irritated with what he perceived as the company's slights, a top executive outlined the scenario in an e-mail to colleagues.

"If he is in fact worth half a billion dollars to (AstraZeneca)," the company's U.S. sales chief wrote in 2001, "we need to put him in a different category." To avoid scaring Reinstein away, he said, the firm should answer "his every query and satisfy any of his quirky behaviors."

Putting aside its concerns, AstraZeneca would continue its relationship with Reinstein, paying him $490,000 over a decade to travel the nation promoting its best-selling antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. In return, Reinstein provided the company a vast customer base: thousands of mentally ill residents in Chicago-area nursing homes.

During that period, Reinstein also faced accusations that he overmedicated and neglected patients who took a variety of drugs. But his research and promotional work went on, including studies and presentations examining many of the antipsychotics he prescribed on his daily rounds.

The AstraZeneca payments, filed as exhibits in a federal lawsuit, highlight the extent to which a leading drug company helped sustain one of the busiest psychiatrists working in local nursing facilities.
more:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-drugs-seroquel-reinsteinnov11,0,6067737.story

[BlueIris]

1. Kick.

[get the red out]

2. This is so common

God knows how many medications are being shoved down people's throats that simply don't work because the research was just a get rich quick scheme?

Disgusting. I have read books about how the big pharmaceutical companies fudge research until I was ready to scream. We are absolutely being conned in this country, we have to pay the cost of all this research with our incredibly high drug prices compared to other countries and so much of it is a con job that it is difficult to tell what drugs are worth any price and which are worth nothing.

Oh Americans are so intelligent and FREE!!!

[Celebration]

3. some of us have it figured out

Doesn't help the patients in the nursing homes, or our Medicare dollars, or insurance premiums.....or a lot of people walking around that could be functioning far better without the prescriptions for drugs that take care of the side effects of other drugs, which are taking care of the side effects of still other prescriptions.

[get the red out]

4. I lived it

I lived what you described in my late 20's and it almost finished me. I live differently today, not avoiding medical care, but being a very questioning consumer. I could say other things I do to take care of myself but that would invite major rage on DU, LOL! But at 45 I am the picture of health, and not on the rollercoaster I was once on. Go figure.

[truedelphi]

5. + 1. n/t