At the moment, Young doctors in the UK are on strike for more pay, their Union, the British Medical Association however says they can’t afford to pay their own staff a similar pay increase, yet they expect the Government to cough up for the Docs who get a lot more than the Nurses. However, in future these docotrs may look forward to some riches from private practice and as can be seen here also from PharmaLand from companies selling drugs
This is apt because soon Neuros from all over the World will be Jetting off to Chicago for the American Association of Neurology. Many of them will have got some form of support to help them attend and that help will come from pharma.
If you want to sell drugs at an MS/Neurology trade show dressed up as a Scientific meeting, you need to make sure the audience is their to hear the sales pitch. The AAN and ECTRIMS are the two big MS meetings each year, but it has been argued that it is time to stop the jollies.
Industry Payments to Physicians Alter the Care of Patients With Multiple Sclerosis: It’s Time to Cut Financial Ties. Bourdette D, Hartung DM.Neurology. 2026;106:e214920.
They detail the report by Patel and colleagues (Patel AN, Kesselheim AS, Rome BN. Industry payments and prescribing of brand-name multiple sclerosis medications in medicare. Neurology. 2026;106(8):e214834.) who examined whether non-research payments by Teva and Biogen altered the probability of physicians prescribing their branded drugs, Copaxone and Tecfidera, in lieu of generic versions. Using 2022 and 2023 Medicare prescription data, they identified 2,675 glatiramer prescribers and 2,138 dimethyl fumarate prescribers. Based on the percentage of prescriptions that were for the brand-name products, prescribers were categorized as low (<20%), medium (20%–79%), and high (≥80%) brand-name prescribers. Using combined Open Payment data from 2021 to 2022, they divided providers into 3 groups: those who received no payments, payments <$1,000, and payments ≥$1,000. The authors then assessed associations between payments received and likelihood of prescribing branded versions of those drugs. Among the glatiramer prescribers, 39.4% (1,026/2,675) received some payment from Teva in 2021–2022 totaling $902,128 with a median payment of $138 per clinician, and 2.7% (73/2,675) received ≥$1,000 with a median payment of $6,333 (range $1,000-$43,859). For dimethyl fumarate prescribers, 57.9% (1,238/2,138) received payments of any amount from Biogen, totaling $8.2 million with a median of $254 and 11.5% (246/2,138) received ≥$1,000 with a median of $24,561 (range $1,008-$229,274).
If we look at “Hartung DM, Markwardt S, Bourdette D. Industry Payments and Branded Glatiramer Acetate Prescribing in the US Medicare Program. Neurol Clin Pract. 2025;15(1):e200424”, it says that most of the people on the take got some food….So neuros are like cats you can attract them via their stomachs:-)
They conclude “Clinicians who received payments from pharma were more likely to prescribe their brand-name drug rather than the generics”
They suggest “The simplest solution is for all physicians to decline any form of payment from industry not related to research. Cutting ties to industry will free us from financial influences in caring for our patients and uphold our conscience and dignity as physicians”.
It is a difficult thing when Americans Neuro’s talk from their Soap Boxes, whilst their Hospitals appear to me to skin people for their care. On holiday we had to see someone for a few minutes, we had to shell out $400 to speak to anyone and then another $600 for the 5 minute consultation…That was a University Health Centre.
It seems to be a bit rich saying neuros should not take any payment from pharma, but at the same time saying it is OK to take their money for research. Then there is all the stuff that pharma pays for such as tests associated with the safer use of their compounds and then there is the pharma service for delivering treatments at home and also the infusion nurses supplied by pharma.
I buy the idea for cutting pharma ties to be more transparent, but I would also remove all neuros from pharma trial publications and also their publicity at the conferences. The trials are paid for and designed by pharma and the neuros are paid consultants (direct to them or their institutions), pharma pay someone to write the papers produce the slides and the figures so get rid of the Great and the Good from the publications. Also are you telling me the journals producing the paper do not benefit from pharma money such as buying reprints etc etc. I remember going to a conference and there were footsteps from the public transport to the venue of the ECTRIMS conference and each footshep was paid for by pharma…without Pharma the AAN and ECTRIMS would be different conferences…maybe more like the science conferences.
I had the pleasure of seeing things from the science side and the clinical side and I have to say there are many soap box scientists that have no clue about the world of clinical science. Likewise those pure white scientists that wouldn’t touch pharmaland can also financially benefit from their science. More grants and papers in certain journals lead to financial gain in better jobs, salaries and resource and trips to meetings….There is an academic greasy pole too.
COI: Yep I have fed at the trough….I you are SH1, pharma are not interested in you. So one can take it as a complement
Disclaimer: My views alone
Source: multiple-sclerosis-research.org