Recent quotes:

Doctor quits Brigham to speak for pay - The Boston Globe

’’There are physicians earning so much money [from drug makers] that they would give up their jobs,’’ said Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. “It’s a shocking story. Normally you’d give up the [pharmaceutical company] honoraria.’’

The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder - The New York Times

In an interview last month, Dr. Dodson said he makes a new diagnosis in about 300 patients a year and, because he disagrees with studies showing that many A.D.H.D. children are not impaired as adults, always recommends their taking stimulants for the rest of their lives. He said that concern about abuse and side effects is “incredibly overblown,” and that his longtime work for drug companies does not influence his opinions. He said he received about $2,000 for the 2002 talk for Shire. He earned $45,500 in speaking fees from pharmaceutical companies in 2010 to 2011, according to ProPublica, which tracks such payments. “If people want help, my job is to make sure they get it,” Dr. Dodson said. Regarding people concerned about prescribing physicians being paid by drug companies, he added: “They like a good conspiracy theory. I don’t let it slow me down.”

60 doctors took speaker fees from drug giant - The Boston Globe

The use of physicians in speakers programs or “bureaus’’ like Lilly’s, in which doctors generally use company-prepared materials to explain a drug’s uses and dosing to their colleagues, is widespread in the drug industry. But the practice is under growing scrutiny and some academic medical centers are barring their doctors from participating, believing that physicians essentially become hired advertising guns, with weakened credibility.

Now you see it (2011) now you don't

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) today announced the launch of a physician payment registry (www.lillyphysicianpaymentregistry.com) to help the public better understand how the company works with U.S. physicians and compensates them for their services — and how these collaborations benefit patient care. The website allows visitors to search payments to individual U.S.-based physicians and the institutions or research organizations that receive payments on behalf of a physician. Payments are reported in several categories — including research-related payments, educational programs and other services, such as commercial consulting. The registry also discloses non-cash forms of value provided (such as business meals), as well as travel expenses paid by Lilly when a physician is performing services for the company.