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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 7:40 am Post subject: Merck brings the pharmaceutical industry to a new low |
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It is pretty hard to surprise people who have followed the pharmaceutical industry for a long time. Drug companies can go to extraordinary lengths to sell their products, even when those products are dangerous. But the latest revelations about Merck, a firm I wrote about in last November�s Prospect, show that the industry never stops innovating.
It turns out that Merck, and perhaps other firms, worked with the Australian branch of publishing giant Elsevier to publish what amount to fake academic journals. The six publications, issued between 2000 and 2005, looked the part. They had boring names and consisted of jargon-laden articles on specialist topics. But they were paid by �pharmaceutical clients�, Elsevier admitted earlier this month.
One of these clients was Merck. Its pseudo-publication � the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine � featured papers with nice things to say about Vioxx, a Merck painkiller that was withdrawn from the market 2004 for safety reasons. At least some of the papers were genuine, as they had appeared previously in other Elsevier publications. But the Merck-funded journal, which ceased publication around five years ago, did not mention that the material had been brought together using corporate sponsorship.
�Even for someone as jaded as me, this is a new wrinkle,� said Peter Lurie, deputy director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. It seems that the pharmaceutical industry has stooped to a new low. |
http://blog.prospectblogs.com/2009/05/20/merck-brings-the-pharmaceutical-industry-to-a-new-low/
This is troubling, but even the proper journals have been corrupted (like every other corner of our societies):
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/25569107/bitter_pill
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22237
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Recently Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the academic physicians who largely determine the market value of prescription drugs. He hasn't had to look very hard.
Take the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital. Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.
Legally, physicians may use drugs that have already been approved for a particular purpose for any other purpose they choose, but such use should be based on good published scientific evidence. That seems not to be the case here. Biederman's own studies of the drugs he advocates to treat childhood bipolar disorder were, as The New York Times summarized the opinions of its expert sources, "so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive."[1]
In June, Senator Grassley revealed that drug companies, including those that make drugs he advocates for childhood bipolar disorder, had paid Biederman $1.6 million in consulting and speaking fees between 2000 and 2007. Two of his colleagues received similar amounts. After the revelation, the president of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the chairman of its physician organization sent a letter to the hospital's physicians expressing not shock over the enormity of the conflicts of interest, but sympathy for the beneficiaries: "We know this is an incredibly painful time for these doctors and their families, and our hearts go out to them." |
More examples in the article. The Rolling Stone article is worth a read too. |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Hey mises, lay off. It takes a lot of money to make new baldness and hard-on pills. Besides, there obviously must be some market-distorting regulation forcing the companies to lie and dope up babies. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Wed May 20, 2009 4:43 pm Post subject: Re: Merck brings the pharmaceutical industry to a new low |
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| ...Journal of Bone... |
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| ... and Joint Medicine |
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