Wyeth makes bad decisions when it comes to transparency
There it is on the front page of todays NY Times Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known. When I read stories like this I have to stop and ask if anyone who does this has ANY common sense or whether they are just plain stupid?
The article continues:
The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.
This is just as bad as falsifying product reviews on Amazon.com or paying BLOGGERS to write a favorable review of your product without disclosing that you are actually being paid for it. If I were a physician who read these articles and made healthcare treatment options based on the information in the articles and then learned that the articles were written by the drug company I would feel victimized and swindled. The more urgent question is why the hell didnt someone within Wyeth raise a red flag and say this maybe within the guidelines but ethically I have a problem with it.
Since the drug industry has an issue with transparency medical journals and the FDA need to clearly state that all articles need to have clear and concise fair balance up front; namely they need to say who wrote the article and who sponsored the article. Medical journals are supposed to contain credible medical information not be a smoke screen for another marketing channel.