Grant Seeks Restrictions on Drug-Company Gifts

Using a $6-million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, two nonprofit groups will announce today a campaign urging limits on the gifts doctors can accept from pharmaceutical companies, reports The New York Times.

The effort is spearheaded by Community Catalyst, a health-care consumer-advocacy group, and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession, at Columbia University. Several medical centers, including Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, have already restricted what doctors can accept from the health-care industry.

Drug companies spend $12 billion a year marketing their products to doctors, the newspaper reports. The group’s campaign comes after an article last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association that called for restrictions on such gifts, which often include free lunches, logo pens, and samples of expensive drugs.

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