S. Charles Schulz, the chief of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota attended a 2000 medical conference to present favorable research on a new drug. Maura Lerner and Janet Moore, staff writers for the Star Tribune, report that Schulz stated that the drug was “significantly superior” to existing drugs used to treat schizophrenia and in an AstraZeneca media release proclaimed the “dramatic benefits” of the new drug. The drug became a wild success, with annual sales of US$4.5 billion.
Newly released documents indicate the drug company knew the research didn’t support either of Schulz’s claims. Experts question the value of the new drug, citing that it doesn’t work better than existing drugs and has “some nasty side effects.”
According to Lerner and Moore, in an interview this week Schulz acknowledged that his own study did not show that the new drug was any more effective than the established drug.
Frank Cerra, the University’s senior vice president for health sciences told Lerner and Moore that “medical research can be interpreted in more than one way, and cautioned against jumping to conclusions based on Internet documents. He said he was not familiar with details of the Schulz study, but that there was nothing unusual about his relationship with AstraZeneca. ‘I think the role of university professors, particularly in health sciences, is to engage with the pharmaceutical industry and the device industry,’ he said. As long as Schulz disclosed his ties, he said, ‘then the university is OK with this.’”
The “Internet documents” to which Cerra refers are internal AstraZeneca documents that recently became public in a Florida federal court case over the new drug’s side effects. Lerner and Moore note that “since the documents started circulating on the Internet, at least one outside critic has called for an investigation by the university.” That outside critic, Brent Robbins, a psychologist at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, apparently wrote on the Society for Humanistic Psychology’s weblog, “Is it any wonder that psychiatric research, and by implication psychiatric practice, is losing credibility due to the economic influence of big pharmaceutical companies.” (Important note: I’m unable to locate the Robbins quote, reported by Lerner and Moore, in either of his articles on the new drug for the Society for Humanistic Psychology’s website, “Sex, Lies and Seroquel” and “Big Pharma Exposed Again: Suppression of Data Unflattering to Seroquel by AstraZeneca.”) Lerner and Moore report Robbins asking rhetorically, “How can we trust science when the people who are conducting the science are only publishing or presenting on findings that favor the economic well-being of the company for which they are hired?”
Schulz, for his part, denies his financial ties to the drug company affected his research. “I don’t think I would have been comfortable standing in front of a poster that exaggerated the results,” he told Lerner and Moore. The Star Tribune staff reporters write that Schulz has received at least US$88,000 from AstraZeneca over a 10-year period, according to records at the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy, and that “AstraZeneca would not reveal the amount it has paid Schulz in consulting and research fees, saying the information is proprietary.” Jeremy Olson, writing for the Pioneer Press, reports that “Schulz has received $112,000 in consulting fees and university grants from 2002 through 2007 from AstraZeneca, according to state records, and nearly $450,000 from rival drug maker Eli Lilly.” Why aren’t the records of payments by drug companies to researchers available on the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy website?
Schulz told Olson that “he has cut back his role with drug companies—mostly forgoing paid lectures to clinics—because of the perception of bias.”
The University of Minnesota has already been around this particular block. Two years ago I wrote about Allan Collins, a University faculty member and president of the National Kidney Foundation whose research was underwritten to the tune of US1.9 million by Amgen, the manufacturer of epogen, the anti-anemia drug. Three years after the underwriting, the National Kidney Foundation issued anemia guidelines that heavily favored drug industry positions.
It’s time for this to end once and for all.
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