Biotech biz views Mass. leaders as friends, foes

Glen Johnson

Gov. Deval Patrick, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray are taking a road trip to San Diego next month for a major biotechnology conference. The way things are shaping up, they could end up as the proverbial skunks at a lawn party.

The three leaders are hoping to use the state’s $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative, a bill they expect will be law by that point, to lure biotech investment to Massachusetts. Yet the industry is rebelling against them because of a provision in a separate health care cost-control bill being pushed by the Senate president.

The provision would ban gifts of any kind from pharmaceutical manufacturers to doctors, their family members or their employees — even those pens with the brand names of drugs on them.

To hear the industry tell it, the free world would lose access to the Band-Aid if that were to happen.

“Strictly interpreted, the ‘anything-of-value’ ban could bring clinical trials to a halt in Massachusetts, severely cut into necessary and mandated continuing educational studies undertaken by physicians and mean that fewer new medicines are readily available to patients in the state that is the global hub of medical innovation,” the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council wrote in a May 1 letter to state legislators.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) wrote DiMasi on April 30 that “the gift-ban provision threatens research and treatment for patients in the Commonwealth.”

And GlaxoSmithKline wrote the three leaders a letter accusing the Massachusetts political establishment of harboring “a strong anti-biopharmaceutical streak.”

Murray declined comment on the letters. But two lawmakers who helped push the bill through the Senate this month were not restrained in their responses.

Each said the gifts were a form of bribery driving up health care costs by overusing pricey medicines.

State Sen. Mark Montigny, who authored the gift-ban provision, said the legislation would not harm medical research, and the Life Sciences Initiative itself is proof the state is not opposed to the biopharmaceutical industry. The bill also expressly allows for doctors to continue receiving free drug samples from the manufacturers.

“They are very loose with the truth,” said Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat. “They’re smart enough to read the law, but not smart enough to keep from misrepresenting it.”

State Sen. Richard Moore, the Uxbridge Democrat who chairs the Legislature’s Health Care Financing Committee, said the bill was aimed at preventing pharmaceutical companies from currying favor for their products with such techniques as providing free lunches for a doctor and his staff, flying them to resorts for work conferences or slapping their name on pro-drug medical journal articles they haven’t even written.

“There are plenty of academic studies that have been written that have concluded that this does influence prescribing inappropriately,” Moore said.

He added: “They’re obviously trying to sell drugs, and to sell them at the highest cost.”

The conflict comes as Patrick, DiMasi and Murray try to sell Massachusetts as a life sciences hub.

Their pitch?

The state has world-renowned colleges, equally admired hospitals and a biotech cluster along the Charles River, Route 128 and at the former Fort Devens. The Life Sciences bill would add $1 billion over 10 years to research and development efforts.

Patrick is hoping to sign the bill into law by June 17, when he, the House speaker and the Senate president travel to San Diego for the biotech conference hosted by BIO — the Washington-based industry trade group lobbying against the gift ban.

Patrick and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are slated to participate in a discussion, entitled “Biotechnology: The Role of Government in Facilitating Research and Discovery in 2009 and Beyond.”

The conference is expected to draw 20,000 people and 2,200 companies from 70 countries. Last year, the conference was held in Boston and Patrick used the occasion to announce his Life Sciences bill.

This year, he hopes turning talk into action will help him lure companies “home.”

While his robust words and deeds have triggered talk about naming Patrick “Governor of the Year” at this year’s conference, that honor is now in doubt based on the gift ban.

A Patrick spokesman said the governor has yet to take a stand on the provision, despite his support for the overall bill.

BIO members are hoping he will end up opposing it.

“For the Life Sciences Initiative to achieve its full promise, every link in the value chain must remain unencumbered, thereby allowing the flow of important medical information to doctors and patients,” the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council told lawmakers.

Glen Johnson has covered local, state and national politics since 1985.

(Associated Press)