Are you attending the NCSL Fall Forum?  Don't miss the presentation on trade coming up later this week in Phoenix, Arizona.  The presentation is on the agenda of the Labor & Economic Development Committee. 

In the distant forum of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, a complex proposal to achieve that would limit state options for negotiating drug costs through rebates has received little notice. If this proposal were to be considered in legislation, it would be controversial and unlikely to pass!

Join Robert Stumberg of the Harrison Institute for Public Law, Georgetown University at the NCSL Fall Forum in Phoenix, AZ for an overview of headline trade policy issues that are important to states including a briefing on the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The New York Times first reported the story that a treatment manual "written" by two prominent psychiatrists where the content was actually under the control of the drugmaker SmithKline Beecham, now GSK.  Funded by a $120,000 "unrestricted educational grant," questions are being raised about who actually wrote the textbook, and what underlying purposes the payments served.

Analysis of the textbook by psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat characterized the entire book as "an advertisement for Paxil." He walks through the structure of the textbook, and highlighting departures from standard psychiatry texts used to highlight anxiety disorder and the use of Paxil to treat the condition. 

At the blog Hooked Dr. Howard Brody offers another question.  If the book only had limited distribution, what was SmithKline Beecham's motivation for the grant to Drs. Nemeroff and Schatzberg, and the payment to the medical communications company?  He argues that the textbook was just one more way for pharma companies to legitimize payments to physicians.

An in-depth ProPublica article puts this latest textbook scandal into the context of newly revealed medical ghostwriting activity.  The ProPublica article includes a insider's take on the ghostwriting industry:  "In my experience, the pharmaceutical company would pay a communications/marketing company to write the manuscript, who would then go out and find academics who would be willing to become the "authors" of the manuscript and paid an honorarium. I've worked with some authors who do absolutely nothing on the manuscript, requiring an additional ghostwriter to be hired, and still demand an honorarium for their time. These academics are willing to enter into this relationship because of the importance of authorship to their careers. You can't entirely blame the pharma company. Universities encourage academics to play this game."