The Trail

Grass Roots Seeded by Drugmaker

• Marcia Angell, a physician who recently stepped down as editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, worries about the effect the coalitions could have on people's faith in public-health campaigns.  Schering's role "underscores for me the fact that drug companies cannot be in education," she said. "They can't because it's a conflict. Their primary mission is to increase the bottom line for shareholders."
   
• HEPATITIS C: SILENT EPIDEMIC, MUTE PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONSE Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, Liver and Biliary Diseases Strategic Plan,'' March 1998 (in subcommittee files). It is noteworthy that the National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA] spent the most NIH resources and continues to spend the most resources on HCV research, which may reflect an institutional bias within HHS that HCV is a disease of injection drug users. This bias may have worked against early recognition of HCV as a broader public health problem.
  
   
• Doctors Reap Millions for Injection Drugs ...a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7 million...prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year...The deal was so good, he said. The indication was so clear and the downside was so small that docs just worked it into their practice easily..." The editorial concludes..."Federal laws already bar drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines in pill form. That prohibition should be extended to injected and intravenous medicines"

  New AASLD Response to Media Report on Hepatitis C Virus "Cure" The AASLD believes that this message was erroneously implied...
   

• CDC Foundation Busted, Partners with Schering to Deceive Millions
  Again, the CDC Foundation assisted by identifying a funding partner, Schering-Plough Corporation, to support the project and pay for a communications fellow to work with CDC staff to implement the campaign.
   
• Lie, Cheat and Steal: SCHERING TO PAY $435 MILLION FOR THE IMPROPER MARKETING OF DRUGS FDA- We will not tolerate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society.”
   
• Drug Companies Fund Patient Advocacy Groups
  A drug company used a public relations firm to set up an expert medical board to persuade people they needed hepatitis A and B vaccinations.
   
• Schering-Plough said under US review for coalitions
  September 2000  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators will examine whether Schering-Plough Corp. violated any federal rules governing advertising and promotion in its efforts to draw attention to hepatitis C..... had created a host of ''grass-roots'' groups to work on issues related to hepatitis C.