Dollars for Docs Adds Payouts from HIV Drug Maker
ViiV Healthcare, which specializes in HIV medications, disclosed paying $3.4 million in speaking and consulting fees to doctors during the first three quarters of 2010. It becomes the eighth company in Dollars for Docs database.
A firm that specializes in HIV medications has become the eighth pharmaceutical company to disclose the payments it has made to U.S. health professionals for speaking and consulting.
ViiV Healthcare disclosed $3.4 million in payments during the first three quarters of 2010. ViiV is jointly owned by GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, both of which have separately disclosed their payments to doctors and other health professionals.
The payments have been added to ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database, which now includes more than $320 million in fees paid since 2009. Other companies are expected to report payments this year, and federal law requires that all drug and medical device manufacturers do so by 2013.
ViiV’s top recipients include Dr. Nicholaos Bellos of Dallas ($83,250), Dr. Daisy Lazarous of Waldorf, Md. ($81,000), Dr. Ricky K. Hsu of New York City ($74,750), Dr. Elizabeth M. Race of Dallas ($65,250) and Dr. Gary Blick of Norwalk, Conn. ($61,750).
According to ViiV’s website, it was created in October 2009, has a 19 percent share of the worldwide HIV drug market and a portfolio of 10 medications.
In announcing its third-quarter earnings, Glaxo disclosed that it had received a subpoena from the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn regarding “sales and marketing practices for three HIV products, as well as educational programmes, grants or payments to physicians regarding any drug used to treat HIV-infected adults.”
Glaxo said it is cooperating with the inquiry and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney declined comment. All of Glaxo’s HIV drugs are now controlled by ViiV.
Also today, we are adding to our database $19.4 million in payments from Eli Lilly and Co. for the third quarter of 2010, $1 million in payments from Cephalon for the fourth quarter and $1.7 million from two Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries for the second quarter. We previously posted payments through the third quarter for another subsidiary, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals.
We will continue to update our database as additional payments are reported.
Dollars for Doctors: How Industry Money Reaches Physicians
ProPublica is tracking the financial ties between doctors and medical companies.
The Story So Far
ProPublica is investigating the financial ties between the medical community and the drug and device industry. In October 2010, ProPublica compiled the list of payments that drug companies make to physicians and built a publicly searchable database so that patients could look up their doctors.
Look Up Your Doctor in Our "Dollars for Docs" Database
March 11, 2013: We have added over one million new records to our database and plan periodic future updates.
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5 comments
Kevin A. McDonald
Feb. 7, 2011, 6:01 p.m.
The physician’s who engage in these practices are the exact opposite of noble.
puranappu
Feb. 7, 2011, 7 p.m.
Whoever said that medicine is a noble profession?.
Doctors are crooks who belong in the same category as lawyers,politicians ,banks,wall street brokers and thieves .
Mark
Feb. 8, 2011, 9:04 p.m.
There are 33,300,000 of AIDS as well as HIV positive single people worldwide. If you are one of them and you are prepared to become a little brave then You may find that POZming.com is just for you. For you will come across new individuals who will certainly become life long friends or Love of life and achieve a degree of self-belief you never would have believed possible.
InsaneJay
Feb. 9, 2011, 12:04 p.m.
I being disabled, have seen the ways doctors work. Very few in the profession seem to care about the their patients. When they have the influence of the pharmaceutical companys swaying their judgment of which meds to prescribe to their patients rather then doing their own research, it greatly ruins the faith the people may have in the quality of care they are receiving from their doctor. Yes doctors are among some of the harder working class of people ion the field with little to no personal time for family or friends, but they chose that profession for a reason and when that reason is money over compassion or wanting to help their fellow man then they should seek a different profession. In this world it always comes back to one thing greed and it is not only some of the doctors seeking the greed. For example just take a look at our lovely over powered over paid government.
Evelyn Nieves
Feb. 13, 2011, 12:13 p.m.
Although the money paid to doctors for presentations may be all true, the way that is being presented appears that physicians are being “bought out” by pharmaceutical companies which is not true. I’m a physician and have been invited to these conferences as a guest, not a speaker. Physicians talk about a disease that can be particularly treated by the medicine represented by the pharmaceutical company, but they also present the other medicines from competitors without saying which one is better. The product may be shown on the screen but the physician presenter will not focus its lecture on the drug. The pharmaceutical company will pay us a nice dinner during the presentation, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to subscribe their drug to our patients. Just because you get a free food sampler at BJ’s doesn’t mean you’re going to buy the product. There is an unfortunate misconception that physicians are crooks, there may be a very small group of them that don’t care, but the majority do care. We’re practicing in a world owned by big companies, no longer by physicians, and we’re trying to make the best we can. The majority of us are just employees of large companies (hospitals, HMO’s, etc) because we can no longer afford private practice. Who are mainly the bad guys? The big corporations that own healthcare, pharmaceutical companies that ridiculously overprice their drugs, and the american government that will not provide free healthcare to all because they’re owned by the greedy banks.
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