In a recent letter to Cancer Investigation, David Steinberg, a hematologist at Lahey Clinic, Burlington, Mass, wrote:

“A $1,000 lottery ticket for a Porsche Boxster automobile was offered to the investigator who accrued the most patients to a Southwest Oncology Group prostate cancer protocol.”

“This was done” Dr. Steinberg says,” with the admirable intention of increasing patient accrual and improving the outlook for men with high risk prostate cancer.”

From the point of view of the patients pulled in as “bodies” for this trial, a skeptic might say, the intention was not necessarily admirable. How is a doctor going to give a patient a fair and unbiased evaluation of whether a trial is good for that indivual to enter when a Porsche beckons - And the patient doesn’t know about this? At the very least, the doctors should have been obliged to disclose their chance of winning the Porsche among other information required for the patient’s informed consent.

The Boxster is the fastest selling Porsche in history with a base price of $42,000, nicely loaded for $9,000 more.

Kudos to Dr. Steinberg for protesting this sleaze.

The offer of this prize, Dr. Steinberg writes, “makes the statement that it is permissible to reward a doctor with an expensive automobile for putting patients on an oncology research protocol. Awarding an expensive prize for patient accrual risks eroding public confidence by creating the perception that clinical investigators, swayed by the allure of an expensive automobile, were motivated by material self-interest rather than the welfare of their patients and the advancement of medical science.”

“I suspect that if the practice of expensive rewards for patient accrual became widespread,” Steinberg says, “the cumulative damage would ultimately outweigh the benefits.”

D. Steinberg,
Lahey Clinic Medical Center, Burlington, Massachusetts, USA.
Cancer Invest Volume 23, Number 8 / 2005