Drug companies paid N.J. doctors millions to promote their products | NJ.com

When pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline noticed Les Burns, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Wayne, was ordering a lot of its products, company officials contacted him.

"They asked, ‘Did I want to talk about it?’ " recalled Burns, who said he has always counseled his patients about getting vaccinated against cervical cancer and hepatitis.

Burns agreed — and the drug company paid him $136,150 for talking up its products at medical conferences and conventions from January 2009 to June 2010, according to a database created by the independent investigative journalism organization ProPublica.

Burns is one of seven doctors practicing in New Jersey who earned more than $100,000 from drug companies during that time. Overall, seven pharmaceutical companies wrote 1,215 checks totaling $8.3 million to doctors in New Jersey, the 10th highest total in the nation, according to ProPublica.

Doctors nationwide earned $258.7 million for speaking and consulting, according to information culled from court documents involving six companies and records from Whitehouse Station-based Merck, which voluntarily disclosed two quarters of payment information.

And that’s just a taste of the $1.2 billion doctors earn on the speaking circuit annually, according to a 2008 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

via nj.com

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