Pfizer to list payments to doctors, researchers

By Ransdell Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc said on Monday it will begin next year to disclose most payments made to doctors and other U.S. healthcare professionals, to comply with the spirit of recently proposed legislation and boost trust in its products and collaborations.

Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker by sales, said it aims by early 2010 to begin listing its payments for consulting, speaking engagements and clinical trials on its Web site www.pfizer.com.

"This makes Pfizer the first biopharmaceutical company to commit to reporting payments for conducting Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials, in addition to disclosing payments for speaking and consulting," Pfizer said in a release.

Such trials run the gamut from earliest-stage human trials to so-called post-marketing studies conducted after medicines are approved.

New York-based Pfizer said it collaborated with almost 8,000 clinical researchers last year in more than 280 studies, making payments to many investigators and their research centers.

"Greater transparency, we feel, will lead to greater trust and bring new medical innovations" forward, said company spokeswoman Kristen Neese.

But the new disclosure plan does not cover payments to some contributors to medical journal articles, such as technical medical writers who do not prescribe medicines and who are sometimes listed as authors of formal study findings.

"In some cases, we will compensate a technical writer to work under the direction of a clinical trial investigator and the technical writers' contributions are publicly disclosed in the acknowledgments section of the article," Neese said.