And If They Say It's Not About the Money...

David Walk of the Drug and Device Law Blog performed a major takedown of the hallowed NEJM and its publication of an interview study (or "study," depending on your perspective) of successful anti-pharma whistleblowers, which was also criticized 2 weeks ago at this blog.

Walk correctly assails the authors' methodology, or lack thereof; their inherent bias in only interviewing prevailing whistleblowers; and findings (or "findings") that might be found in any lazy magazine piece—like, "a typical day could be meeting an FBI agent in a parkway rest stop. Sitting in his car with the windows rolled up. Neither heat nor air conditioning."

Neither heat nor air conditioning? Walk's pithy response: "Wow."

Another wry criticism of the authors' findings: Questioning how some whistleblowers "accidentally" "fell into the qui tam process." Walk responds, "As lawyers, we know it’s pretty hard to file a lawsuit accidentally," and "Try that argument at home to excuse some dumb thing you did."

And if it truly, really, verily isn't about the money, as the interviewed whistleblowers would like us to believe, then revamp the whole process. Walk logically concludes,

Then the qui tam system urgently needs revision. We're wasting millions that could be benefiting us as taxpayers. Obviously, these relators didn’t need the millions of dollars they received to motivate them to bring qui tam lawsuits. All that money can go back to the taxpayers or, better yet, our clients, the pharmaceutical companies.

Last Walk snipes at the authors' conclusion that the qui tam system should be revamped on the basis of their interviews.

What a great idea – deciding important public policy questions based only on a few interviews of one of many interested groups. Maybe someone will follow this NEJM-approved "scientific" approach to public policymaking and make serious proposals to reform the nation’s regulation of doctors based solely on 30 to 45 minute interviews of 26 successful medical malpractice plaintiffs.

Image of Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni from Wikipedia.