Doctors Who Promote More Expensive Eye Drug Are Among The Highest-Paid Genentech Consultants
December 9, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Major drug maker Genentech is coming under fire Tuesday, after a report in the New York Times found that doctors who prescribed the company’s pricey cancer drug Lucentis were also among the highest-paid consultants for the firm.
The newspaper parsed a federal database that tracks what doctors earn from pharmaceutical and biotech firms across fiscal years. It found that the doctors more likely to prescribe $2,000 a dose Lucentis over its cheaper alternative Avastin ($50 a dose) were consistently ranked among the highest-paid consultants used by Genentech to promote its drug pipeline and products.
“Half of the 20 doctors who received the most money from Genentech to promote Lucentis in 2013 were among the highest users of the drug in 2012, billing for higher amounts of Lucentis than 75 percent of their peers,” found the report.
In all, these 20 doctors raked in $8,500 to $37,000 over five months in 2013, money Genetech paid them to cover their consulting fees, travel expenses, meals and even speaking engagement. Roche-owned Genentech has a long-standing cap of $50,000 per doctor annually for speaking fees, but that arrangement is now being questioned.
Experts on Tuesday said that patients have a right to wonder about conflicts of interest when they are being prescribed expensive therapies that are as clinically effective as cheaper versions, simply because their doctor has a cozy arrangement with the drug maker.
“That’s why a sandwich is so effective—no one wants to feel like they were being bought off for $5,” said Adriane Fugh-Berman, an associate professor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington and director of PharmedOut, a project that educates doctors about drug marketing claims, told the paper. “That’s why they convince themselves that the drug is better.”
The money at stake is significant: Lucentis made $1.3 billion for Genetech in sales in the first three quarters of 2014, a sign of how expensive it really is, considering sales only crept up 5 percent during that time period. In 2011, the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services released a study that showed the federal government could have saved around $1.4 billion by prescribing other, cheaper therapies.
For its part, Genentech said it saw no correlation between higher paid consultancy arrangements and more expensive drugs being prescribed.
“We’re looking to work with doctors who are in the top of their field, and who can provide us an honest perspective on what patients need and don’t need,” said Edward Lang Jr., a spokesman for Genentech.