Dr Melissa DelBello speaks, but this time it's on YouTube

Sen. Charles Grassley's hall of shame: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee raised the case of Dr. Melissa DelBello, a psychiatrist who got hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses, consulting fees, and lecture payments from AstraZeneca. DelBello also happened to be lead author of a study that concluded kids did well on AstraZeneca's antipsychotic med Seroquel.

Here's the timeline: DelBello authored the study, published in 2002. In 2003, she got $100,000 from the drugmaker, or so she told the University of Cincinnati. In 2004, she reported $80,000. AstraZeneca's figures total $238,000.

Grassley was pretty peeved not only about the apparent conflict of interest--which AstraZeneca denied; DelBello wasn't available for comment--but also by the fact that DelBello also got NIH funding during the same period. University of Cincinnati said it applauds Grassley's "looking into this very important issue."

Read more: Seroquel researcher got cash from AZ - FiercePharma http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/seroquel-researcher-got-cash-from-az/2008-04-08#ixzz14TRkOmDR

Looks like Melissa is now also getting money from Lilly :  

http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/payments/557430

"It was a very clever sort of con"

"Almost the whole scientific community was conned into thinking — as a consequence of good marketing — that this was a different and better set of drugs. The evidence, as it's all added up, has shown this to be untrue." Dr. Peter Tyrer, a leading psychiatric researcher at Imperial College London

"We have been paying $16 billion a year instead of $2 billion a year for drugs that seem to be no better and might be worse." Douglas Leslie, a researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina

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