Hollywood doctor was paid by drug company to push Botox on patients

• They call him "Mr. Botox" for good reason.
• Along the way, he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from Botox manufacturer Allergan Inc., which pays him for acting as a "media spokesman" for the drug and lending a hand with other consulting chores.
• Such arrangements typically are secret, but Klein's contract surfaced in a medical malpractice case filed by Hollywood wife Irena Medavoy against the Irvine-based drug company and the Beverly Hills doctor.
• The injury-by-Botox lawsuit, set for trial this month in Los Angeles Superior Court, provides a rare look at the relationships between drug companies and the physicians who consult for them.
• Klein, along with dozens of others, has lined up behind Allergan's biggest drug to serve as both advisor and cheerleader.
• His duties included teaching other doctors to inject the anti-wrinkle drug.
• Forty doctors were groomed by Allergan's public relations experts to act as media spokesmen for Botox, and the company had 300 doctor's offices and medical clinics in its official network of Botox training centers, court documents show.
• Klein, 59, was a clinical professor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, an unpaid position, and well known in Hollywood, where his celebrity patients included Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson.
• Last month, UCLA announced that some of Klein's friends had anonymously pledged at least $1 million to endow a dermatology chair in his name.
• The National Institutes of Health (news - web sites), the nation's premier medical research organization, was criticized last year for allowing its top scientists to advise drug companies.
• Klein coauthored a 2002 article in the Archives of Dermatology (news - web sites) that provided how-to advice; it was accompanied by diagrams that showed where Botox should --- and shouldn't --- be injected for wrinkles around the eyes, chin and lips and on the forehead.