Pharmaceutical Whistleblowers

A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that 94 percent of physicians had some type of explicit relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, a government report done in Vermont found that in 2006 drug companies gave the average psychiatrist with high drug-company earnings a bit more than $45,000 in assorted honoraria and travel expenses. The report also found that physicians who took the most payments tended, more often than other doctors, to prescribe to children "atypical antipsychotics" -- a new class of powerful medications -- although none of these drugs have FDA approval for use with kids.