Patients May Die When Doctors Moonlight as Big Pharma’s “Key Opinion Leaders”
Article on Procrit/Epogen from Care2.com (blog). Related article from Truthout.
Editor's note: I believe this issue should not be ignored.
On Jan. 5th, the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP) announced their 2012 Medal of Excellence winners. One of them was Dr. Charles McAllister, a former Chief Medical Officer at DaVita.
If the AAKP does not want to be seen as anything but an industry lap dog, it needs to explain why it is giving him this award and who nominated him — especially considering his past public stances on EPO doses.
This is an excerpt from a Sept. 14, 2006 article in The Boston Globe by Christopher Rowland, "AS KIDNEY DRUG DOSES RISE, SO DO WARNINGS":
DaVita's national medical director, Charles McAllister, said (Dr. Ajay K.) Singh's recommendation that the FDA's limit (for Epogen) be observed does a "disservice" to dialysis patients.
"Our doctors continue to aggressively manage anemia there isn't any over-utilization," McAllister said. "I think we should be using more epo."
EPO was a source of profits for DaVita. Among the largest dialysis providers, DaVita gave the largest doses of EPO in the industry during his tenure. DCI, a large non-profit provider, gave far smaller doses of EPO and had better patient outcomes than DaVita or Fresenius. (And who received the 2011 AAKP Medal of Excellence Award?) |
