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Drug company payments to doctors still hard to access despite disclosure laws

BMJ 2007; 334 doi: 10.1136/bmj.39164.663044.DB (Published 29 March 2007)
Cite this as: BMJ 2007;334:655.1

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  1. Fred Charatan
  1. Florida

    An attempt to use disclosure laws passed by two US states to discover the sums of money paid by drug companies to doctors found the relevant information was of limited quality and hard to access.

    The US states of California, Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia have laws mandating disclosure of payments made to doctors by drug companies. In two of these states, Vermont and Minnesota, payment disclosures are meant to be publicly available.

    The Vermont law, enacted in 2001, requires drug companies to disclose any gift or payment of $25 (£13; €19) or more to doctors, hospitals, nursing …

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