Profil

E-Mail: christina_elmer(at)spiegel.de

Euros für Ärzte

Doctors eagerly welcome big pharma’s money

Pharmaceutical companies have a history of being quite generous with physicians: They pay for their contracts, invite them to congressional meetings, pay for their hotel rooms, reward them for drug monitoring. A total of 575 million euros flowed from pharmaceutical companies into the hands of more than 71,000 doctors and medical experts this past year in Germany alone. But only 20,000 of these doctors are willing to have their name and the amount of money they’ve accepted disclosed.