MA doctors are earning drug firms' dollars

The Harvard brand, unrivaled in education, is also prized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful tool in promoting drugs. Its allure is evident in a new analysis of all publicly reported industry payments to physicians.

Doctors and researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School collected 45 percent of the $6.3 million given to Massachusetts doctors in 2009 and 2010 by seven pharmaceutical companies that disclosed their payments for parts of those years. The money was mostly for talking to other physicians about the companies’ drugs and the diseases they treat, but also for consulting on research and marketing.