Editorial: Drug makers and doctors

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

A medical society group has captured the attention of U.S. physicians with a proposal for a new definition of high blood pressure that expands the ranks of hypertension sufferers. It caught our attention because the group has been bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry that stands to benefit from the new definition.

The New York Times recently reported that a seven-member panel of the 1,600-member American Society of Hypertension took its study funding from three drug makers - Merck, Novartis and Sankyo. The companies also gave the group $700,000, mostly for seven dinner lectures at upscale steak houses around the country to brief doctors on the proposal, according to The Times.

The proposal includes categorizing some patients with pre-hypertension to a new "Stage 1 hypertension," and potentially making them more likely candidates for medications made by the drug companies. The proposal could affect the care of millions - 65 million Americans have high blood pressure and another 59 million are on the cusp of it.

Many members of the society, including members of the proposal group, deny a conflict of interest. But others said the proposal is tainted, including two members of the proposal group who quit the study over the issue. Dr. Michael Alderman, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, said the proposal was devised based on opinions, not rooted in science.

Another doctor, Curt Furberg, a professor of public health science at Wake Forest University, told the Times, "The industry wants to sell drugs and to as many people as possible."

Amid ever-growing concern that the pharmaceutical industry influences medical science, proposals like this one should be scrapped. Drug companies that stand to make money on new proposals should not pay for them. If there is to be a new definition of high blood pressure, it should come after a new, truly independent study that is free of conflicts of interest.