Bios

Adriane Fugh-Berman MD is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology and in the Department of Family Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, where she teaches graduate and medical students about evidence-based medicine and critical assessment of drugs and other therapeutics. As director of PharmedOut, a GUMC research and education project that promotes rational prescribing and exposes the effect of pharmaceutical marketing on prescribing practices, Dr. Fugh-Berman leads a team of volunteer professionals that has had a profound impact on prescribers’ perceptions of the adverse consequences of industry marketing.

Dr. Fugh-Berman has authored many key articles in peer-reviewed literature on the area of physician-industry relationships and conflicts of interest, including an article about how industry uses social psychology to manipulate physicians, an exposé of how ghostwritten articles in the medical literature were used to sell menopausal hormone therapy, an analysis of how “key opinion leaders” are used to market drugs off-label, an explanation of drug rep tactics, a discussion of prescription tracking, a description of industry publication planning, an article on conflicts of interest in basic sciences and a national survey of industry interactions with family medicine residencies. A study in the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions documents the effect of Why Lunch Matters, a presentation that is the first to document a significant change in physicians’ perceptions about their own individual vulnerability to pharmaceutical marketing. Dr. Fugh-Berman lectures internationally and has appeared on every major television network.