Hoo whee.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  Why are these salespeople professors?

The Wall Street Journal, focusing on the latest sordid conflict of interest (UD thanks a reader for forwarding a related article about the professor in question.), quotes the head of the Association for Medical Ethics, and he says what needs to be said.

An excerpt, and a handy chart, from the Wall Street Journal:

“A prominent spine surgeon and researcher at the University of Wisconsin received $19 million in payment over five years from Medtronic Inc., one of the country’s largest makers of spinal devices, according to a senator who is investigating potential conflicts of interest in medicine.

The surgeon, Thomas Zdeblick, received the payments while helping Medtronic develop and promote a number of spinal products. Medtronic’s $19 million in payments to Dr. Zdeblick from 2003 to 2007 went “greatly” beyond what was evident in disclosures he made to the university, Sen. Charles Grassley said in a Jan. 12 letter to Kevin P. Reilly, the school’s president. The University of Wisconsin, like other academic centers that conduct federal research, is required by the government to monitor its researchers’ financial conflicts.

In each of the five years cited in the letter, Dr. Zdeblick told the university that he received $20,000 or more from Medtronic, and in one year, he reported getting $40,000 or more. The disclosures conform to school policies, which currently don’t require researchers to specify amounts received above $20,000.

The report of multimillion-dollar payments to Dr. Zdeblick comes amid a growing movement for more detailed disclosure of the financial ties between doctors and outside interests. Most public disclosures of relationships between doctors and companies rarely specify how much a physician is being paid. When amounts are disclosed, they are often revealed in a fashion similar to that of Wisconsin’s policy in which a threshold amount is used, such as a doctor earning more than $10,000, with no other details reported.

Sen. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, told Mr. Reilly that “more than $20,000″ in this case meant far more — from $2.6 million to $4.6 million in royalty and consulting payments per year — according to Medtronic records…”

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The Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel has some questions.  But nobody’s around!

One unanswered question is how Zdeblick could work as a full-time employee of the university and develop inventions with royalties in which the university did not share. Often, such payments go through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

A spokesman for [the university's president said the president] did not want to comment and referred a reporter to officials with the Madison campus.

Robert Golden, dean of the medical school, was not available for comment. Jeffrey Grossman, president and chief executive officer of the UW Medical Foundation, also was not available for comment.

None of this would have come out if it weren’t for lawsuits.

In some lawsuits, Medtronic has been accused by former employees and the government of inducing surgeons to use its spine products with payments for sham consulting agreements and lavish travel. In 2006, Medtronic agreed to pay $40 million to the government to settle civil allegations that it paid kickbacks to doctors, including sham consulting and sham royalty agreements as well as lavish trips. Those allegations were initially made in two lawsuits brought by former Medtronic employees, including a former legal counsel. As part of the settlement, the employee lawsuits were dismissed. While agreeing to the settlement, Medtronic denied any wrongdoing.

In one of the lawsuits settled by the government’s agreement, a former Medtronic employee said Dr. Zdeblick received a “sham” 10-year consulting contract with Medtronic. A copy of the contract shows that he agreed to do two days of work per quarter over 10 years for $400,000 a year…