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How CNN’s Sanjay Gupta Became Big Pharma’s Favorite Face
Topic Started: Oct 20 2010, 11:52 AM (1,143 Views)
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How CNN’s Sanjay Gupta Became Big Pharma’s Favorite Face
By Jim Edwards | October 19, 2010

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On Propublica’s list of 17,000 doctors who take money from Big Pharma, one of the standout names is “Sanjay Gupta,” who took $155,943 from Eli Lilly, (LLY) GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and AstraZeneca (AZN). No, it’s not that Sanjay Gupta, the CNN medical correspondent who was once floated as a candidate for surgeon general. Rather, it’s a psychiatrist with the same name who practices in upstate New York.

But the fact that psychiatry’s Gupta practices with a financial conflict of interest when he prescribes those companies’ drugs underlines just how many doctors take money from the companies whose products they’re supposed to be assessing objectively. As it turns out, CNN’s Gupta, like his New York namesake, also has a tangled relationship with the pharmaceutical business.

For years Gupta and his CNN colleage Robin Meade have hosted a fluffy health information show on AccentHealth, a network of closed circuit TVs in doctor and hospital waiting rooms nationwide, sponsored by drug companies. Gupta has been an AccentHealth host since 2003. AccentHealth says its clients are “primarily pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods companies.”

AccentHealth does not currently disclose on its web site which companies pay for Gupta’s programming. However, in previous press releases it has said that its clients include “Aventis, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Merck, and Warner Lambert,” and “Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Smith Kline, … Pharmacia, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical (a unit of Johnson & Johnson, and), General Mills.”

It’s easily one of the strangest and longest running drug sponsorship relationships in the news business. Some believe it’s a conflict of interest. When Merck launched Gardasil, the HPV vaccine for girls, Counterpunch writer Pam Martens thought Gupta’s CNN coverage of the controversy was too soft:

… should Dr. Sanjay Gupta have revealed to his CNN viewers during his extolling of the virtues of Gardasil that its manufacturer, Merck, was a financial sponsor of this integrated marketing scheme he co-hosts at AccentHealth?

CNN defends the relationship by arguing that Gupta’s show is produced independently from the sponsorship:

A CNN spokesperson e-mailed us this morning to emphasize that AccentHealth is responsible only for distribution and sales of the program, while CNN maintains full editorial control of its content.

It sounds like AccentHealth operates along the same lines as CNN itself — they’re simply broadcasting information, and sponsors can choose to be next to that. But it’s more the case that AccentHealth only exists because drug companies pay for its existence and Gupta’s presence.

That makes it the equivalent of advertorial, or a special section for advertisers. In the print world, such sections are clearly labelled so readers know that they’re not reading “news.” The sample programming on AccentHealth’s site doesn’t make that disclosure. Perhaps it should: AccentHealth’s programming carries the CNN logo on the screen, which might make some patients believe Gupta is telling them the news when, clearly, he isn’t.

source: BNET




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