CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight - Transcript

CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight - Transcript
Wednesday, August 10, 2005

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DOBBS: Now, this is a remarkable piece of legislation for its lack of focus on the problem. And that is creating alternate energy sources and dealing with the existing, what is now becoming a price crisis for consumers.

Bill Tucker. Thank you.

An astonishing new report in the Seattle Times alleges that doctors are selling critically important secret drug research to elite private investors and Wall Street analysts before that information becomes public. The goal, of course, to give analysts and hedge fund investors, for example, the opportunity to manipulate drug stocks for their own gain.

Senator Chuck Grassley, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, is leading the fight to stop this outrageous abuse. The senator has called upon the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department to launch an immediate investigation.

Senator Grassley, how has this practice been allowed to continue unchecked until now?

GRASSLEY: Well, I suppose because we have confidence that the Securities and Exchange Commission is going to be on top of everything. And quite obviously they aren't on top of this.

And I think also that there's people within medical research that aren't entirely ethical, and they violate that confidentiality rules, and you would assume that doctors would abide by the ethics of their profession and their confidentiality rules with the companies that they're doing research with. And they don't happen to be.

DOBBS: These doctors involved in clinical trials, are they moving this information from the secret and confidential basis in which they participate at the behest of the pharmaceutical companies themselves, in your opinion?

GRASSLEY: Based upon what the Seattle Times has said, it's very obvious in those instances. I don't know how widespread it is, and consequently, that's why I've asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate it for two reasons.

Number one, we want to make sure that there's public confidence in our marketplace; in other words, that the market's going to find its own level without being influenced.

And we also -- and maybe even more importantly -- we want to maintain confidence in the public integrity of our research, medical research so that we get all the advances in medicine that we can. We don't want that compromised.

And I think when you have information like this being leaked by doctors, and particularly when they're paying for it and in violation of their confidentiality rules, the public's going to lose confidence in the medical research, and it's going to be withdrawn.

DOBBS: There are an estimated two lobbyists for every congressman in Washington representing just the pharmaceutical industry. Is this influencing some of the -- just absolutely, if not absolutely illegal practices, certainly questionable practices that are going on in the pharmaceutical industry and whether we've talked about the Federal Drug Administration and clinical trials -- just how widespread do you think this is? And is that lobbyist influence one of the contributing causes?

GRASSLEY: Well, I think that you raise a legitimate question about the influence of the lobby generally in pharmaceutical policymaking. I don't have any evidence, though, that that's related to this lack of enforcement of these exchanges between doctors and hedge fund operators.

I think this might be something that is new, brought to attention, something that probably the Securities and Exchange Commission and the attorney general should have been on top of but aren't.

But I don't have any information that this sort of lobbying is influencing this at this point.

Now, if we start to do something about it -- which we'll wait until we get the investigation done to make that determination -- but if we do something about it and it's done through Congress and I get pressure on me not to have hearings on it, or if there's some law that's got to be changed, then we'll find out if that influence is as great as you suggest.

In other areas, I would suggest that you're right.

DOBBS: Senator Grassley, we thank you for being with us here. Appreciate it.

GRASSLEY: Thank you.

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