Pfizer Details Payments to Doctors

Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, said Wednesday that it paid about $20 million to 4,500 doctors and other medical professionals for consulting and speaking on its behalf in the last six months of 2009, its first public accounting of payments to the people who decide which drugs to recommend. Pfizer also paid $15.3 million to 250 academic medical centers and other research groups for clinical trials in the same period.