Pharmaceutical Ghost Writing More Common Than Thought: Prof Healy
According to an article in The Telegraph - Makers 'ghost' drugs reviews - the pharmaceutical industry routinely bribes doctors and "ghostwrites" articles about drugs in major medical journals. Professor David Healy, of the University of Wales, told the Commons health select committee that as many as half the articles published in journals such as the British Medical Journal and The Lancet were written by members of the industry who had a vested interest in selling the drugs involved.
It is apparently quite common for respected medical authorities to just sign their name to a study to give it that extra power of persuasion the drug industry needs to make doctors prescribe (and authorities approve) their drugs.
See also:
Modern Medicine Pushing Poisonous Drugs - Says Doctor
Pharma Promotion Dishonest - Slanted Reporting of Paxil, Prozac Studies
Drug Advertising Not Based on Facts
How to Achieve positive Results without actually Lying to Overcome the Truth
Indicting the Drug Industry's Practices
Here is an archived copy of the Telegraph article:
Makers 'ghost' drugs reviews
By Rosie Murray-West, City Correspondent
(Filed: 15/10/2004)
The pharmaceutical industry routinely bribes doctors and "ghostwrites" articles about drugs in major medical journals, MPs were told yesterday.
Professor David Healy, of the University of Wales, told the Commons health select committee that as many as half the articles published in journals such as the British Medical Journal and The Lancet were written by members of the industry who had a vested interest in selling the drugs involved.
Respected clinicians were then paid to have their names put at the top of the articles, he claimed, even though they had not seen the raw data on which they were based.
He said "ghostwritten" articles had far more of an effect on which drugs doctors prescribe than Caribbean conferences where doctors were given massages and "loaded down" with bags of gifts.
"The problem isn't the adverts, the problem isn't the trips to the Caribbean," he said. "We are influenced by articles in journals."
He said he had been asked to put his name to an article, but had not done so. He then saw the same article bearing the name of Siegfried Kasper, from the Department of General Psychiatry at the University of Vienna.
The committee, which is holding an inquiry into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, was told by another doctor that he had been offered two years' salary to suppress data about a drug.
Dr Peter Wilmshurst, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, said: "I know the pharmaceutical industry influences the research that is published. I suspect this is as common now as ever. I think it is very common. People are influenced by opinion leaders who are paid consultants to the company."
The pharmaceutical industry is reeling from the recent withdrawal of the rheumatoid arthritis drug, Vioxx, and widespread concerns over the anti-depressant Seroxat being prescribed for children.
At yesterday's hearing, Graham Vidler, head of policy for the Consumers' Association, said the industry's concern with profits and shareholders was "in direct conflict with the responsibilities of the NHS".
After the hearing, a spokesman for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said there was some doubt that the committee was approaching the issue constructively.
He said there was "nothing wrong" with articles in major medical journals being written up for a clinician by a company "as long as the person has seen the article and signed it off".
"It is quite wrong if people are putting their names to something they haven't read."
A spokesman for the British Medical Journal said: "The BMJ asks authors to state that they accept full responsibility for the conduct of the study, had access to the data, and controlled the decision to publish.
"We also publish contributorship statements for each piece of research, which show exactly what each contributor has done."
A spokesman for The Lancet said Prof Healy's comments were "a wild exaggeration".
Dr Des Spence, who runs the British arm of No Free Lunch - a campaign against the industry's influence on doctor's prescriptions, attacked the "widespread hospitality culture", which saw doctors accepting lunches from pharmaceutical companies every single day.
"If civil servants, teachers or policemen were receiving this level of hospitality there would be a public outcry," he said. "However, there is some idea that doctors are anointed by God - this simply isn't true."
He said doctors were just a cross-section of the population, and easily influenced, but they don't complain "because it would be like complaining that Father Christmas gave too many presents this year".