Another Emory Psychiatrist Draws Fire for Payments From Glaxo

Here is another classic example of a scumbag drug company who got caught red handed, paying off a doctor to conduct a biased study on the merits of their drug.


WSJ - More details are coming out about the relationship between Emory University psychiatrist Zachary Stowe and GlaxoSmithKline, which made payments to Stowe at the same time he was conducting federal research about the use of antipressants, such as Glaxo’s Paxil, in pregnant women.

Emory has reprimanded Stowe, who was instructed to immediately eliminate conflicts related to current federal grants. In a statement, the school said Stowe had informed it of “previously unreported activities and has disclosed his failure to abide by Emory policies.” Stowe, through the university, declined an interview request. Here’s more on the story.

In a letter this month to Emory, Sen. Charles Grassley said records he obtained from Glaxo indicated Stowe was paid $154,400 by the drug company in 2007 and $99,300 during the first 10 months of 2008. Stowe is listed as the primary investigator on at least three National Institutes of Health grants, beginning in 2003 and continuing through last year, that involve antidepressant use in pregnant women and the effects on children delivered by those women.

Meanwhile, Stowe outlined some dealings with Glaxo in a deposition last year taken as part of a lawsuit claiming that Paxil isn’t safe for pregnant women. Stowe was questioned in detail about a 2000 email from an outside public-relations firm to a marketing executive at Glaxo about a planned press release for a new study. The study, conducted by Stowe, found Paxil is safe for breast-feeding mothers. The PR firm’s email to Glaxo reads:

Please review the attached press release and forward me any comments/edits. As you may know, Dr. Stowe is on board for publicity efforts and Sherri and I are coordinating time to meet with him next week to arm him with key messages for this announcement, which is slated for early February. We are sending the release for his review at the same time in efforts to secure distribution on Emory letterhead (as you know, would provide further credibility to data for the media).

In the deposition, Stowe said the quotes in the press release were his own. “They wrote it, we said it,” Stowe said of the involvement of the public-relations agency. As for the assertion by the PR official that Stowe was being provided with “key messages,” the psychiatrist called that “just typical public relations crap” and he said in the deposition he never received help from the PR officials.

Stowe is the second Emory psychiatrist to run into problems related to his work with the drug industry. Charles Nemeroff stepped down as chairman of the psychiatry department last year after an Emory investigation concluded that he failed to report more than $800,000 he received from Glaxo from 2000 to 2006. In December, he said in a statement that he acted “in good faith to comply with the rules as I understood them to be in effect at the time.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/10/another-emory-psychiatrist-draws-fire-for-payments-from-glaxo/