British medical associations paid millions by drug companies, says report

Pharmaceutical companies paid the UK’s top medical associations millions of pounds over the last few years, a report published in the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ) last week found.

Associations like the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of General Practitioners have received over £9 million ($11.57 million) since 2015, with Pfizer paying the lion’s share at £1,825,000 ($2,346,348).

Johnson & Johnson paid a total of £819,000 ($1,052,964) to the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal College of Opthalmologists. 

The associations also received payments from GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi Adventis, and a host of other drug companies. Most of the payments (£4.59 million, or $5.9 million) took the form of sponsorships or “support of events” followed by £2.29 million ($2.94 million) in donations and grants.

According to the report, payments from drug companies to medical associations dipped between 2019 and 2020, but then shot upward in 2021 to over £1.5 million ($3.2 million), an historical high.

The Royal College of General Practitioners received the most payments from drug companies, followed by the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. 

All but one association — the Royal College of Anaesthetists — refused to disclose the details of the drug monies they received to the BMJ. Data was therefore collected from disclosures by drug companies in compliance with industry transparency laws.

In their refusals, many of the associations claimed the payments do not affect their “independence” or practices, though research suggests the opposite is true. The College of Psychiatrists of Ireland has even refused to take pharmaceutical sponsorships since 2012 for that reason.

“Research in this area has overwhelmingly showed that clinicians are influenced by the pharmaceutical industry’s marketing strategies which have an impact on prescribing practises,” reads a position paper from the association.

A 2020 review of 36 studies on the relationship between pharmaceutical payments and clinical decision making found that “[p]ayments were associated with increased prescribing of the paying company's drug, increased prescribing costs, and increased prescribing of branded drugs.”

Furthermore, a study of science suppression during the COVID-19 pandemic found that grants have been used to strongarm researchers into stifling criticism of the COVID vaccines. Some researchers and health professionals who have so much as raised potential concerns about the vaccine were blocked from getting grants not just for vaccine research, but for any research at all.