Senator Charles E. Grassley on Tuesday asked the drug maker Pfizer to provide details of its payments to at least 149 faculty members at Harvard Medical School.The senator, an Iowa Republican who is investigating the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine, also asked for any Pfizer e-mail, faxes, letters or photos regarding Harvard medical students who have protested drug company influence.
Mr. Grassley, in a letter to Pfizer, wrote that he was “greatly disturbed” to read an article in The New York Times on Tuesday describing a Pfizer representative taking cellphone photos of the medical students last October at a campus demonstration against industry influence. “I find this troubling as I have documented several instances where pharmaceutical companies have attempted to intimidate academic critics of drugs,” he wrote.
The request for information about Pfizer payments to Harvard Medical faculty members in the last two years expands Mr. Grassley’s investigation of industry payments to three Harvard psychiatrists who had promoted antipsychotic medicines for children. According to records Mr. Grassley obtained from drug companies, the professors were accused of not properly reporting at least $4.2 million in payments from 2000 to 2007. One of them has been suspended from conducting clinical trials.
The investigation continues.
A Pfizer spokesman said on Tuesday that the company “will fully cooperate with Senator Grassley’s request for information.” The spokesman, Ray Kerins, said Pfizer regrets if the photograph taken by the sales representative “was offensive to anyone involved,” but believes the company has acted legally and ethically and that collaboration with medical schools is “a valuable source of innovation and scientific advancement.”
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