Scandal of scientists who take money for papers ghostwritten by drug companies

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Scandal of scientists who take money for papers ghostwritten by drug

companies

 

 

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4351264,00.html

>

> Scandal of scientists who take money for papers ghostwritten by drug

> companies

>

> Doctors named as authors may not have seen raw data

>

> Sarah Boseley, health editor

> Thursday February 7, 2002

> The Guardian

>

> Scientists are accepting large sums of money from drug companies to put

> their names to articles endorsing new medicines that they have not

written -

> a growing practice that some fear is putting scientific integrity in

> jeopardy..

>

> Ghostwriting has become widespread in such areas of medicine as cardiology

> and psychiatry, where drugs play a major role in treatment. Senior

doctors,

> inevitably very busy, have become willing to " author " papers written for

> them by ghostwriters paid by drug companies..

>

> Originally, ghostwriting was confined to medical journal supplements

> sponsored by the industry, but it can now be found in all the major

journals

> in relevant fields. In some cases, it is alleged, the scientists named as

> authors will not have seen the raw data they are writing about - just

tables

> compiled by company employees..

>

> The doctors, who may also give a talk based on the paper to an audience of

> other doctors at a drug company-sponsored symposium, receive substantial

> sums of money. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Foundation

> Research Programmes in Bethesda, Maryland, found in a survey that British

> psychiatrists were being paid around $2,000 (£1,400) a time for symposium

> talks, plus airfares and hotel accommodation, while Americans got about

> $3,000. Some payments ran as high as $5,000 or $10,000..

>

> " Some of us believe that the present system is approaching a high-class

form

> of professional prostitution, " he said..

>

> Robin Murray, head of the division of psychological medicine at the

> Institute of Psychiatry in London, is one of those who has become

> increasingly concerned. " It is clear that we have a situation where, when

an

> audience is listening to a well-known British psychiatrist, you recognise

> the stage where the audience is uncertain as to whether the psychiatrist

> really believes this or is saying it because they them selves or their

> department is getting some financial reward, " he said..

>

> " I can think of a well-known British psychiatrist I met and I said, 'How

are

> you?' He said, 'What day is it? I'm just working out what drug I'm

> supporting today.' "

>

> Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote

a

> year ago that when she ran a paper on antidepressant drug treatment, the

> authors' financial ties to the manufacturers - which the journal requires

> all contributors to declare - were so extensive that she had to run them

on

> the website. She decided to commission an editorial about it and spoke to

> research psychiatrists, but " we found very few who did not have financial

> ties to drug companies that make antidepressants. "

>

> She wrote: " Researchers serve as consultants to companies whose products

> they are studying, join advisory boards and speakers' bureaus, enter into

> patent and royalty arrangements, agree to be the listed authors of

articles

> ghostwritten by interested companies, promote drugs and devices at

> company-sponsored symposiums, and allow themselves to be plied with

> expensive gifts and trips to luxurious settings. Many also have equity

> interest in the companies. "

>

> In September her journal joined the Lancet and 11 others in denouncing the

> drug companies for imposing restrictions on the data to which scientists

are

> given access in the clinical trials they fund. Some of the journals

propose

> to demand a signed declaration that the papers scientists submit are their

> own..

>

> The success of Prozac, the antidepressant which became a cult " happy " drug

> in the 1990s, substantially raised the stakes in psychiatry. Its promotion

> coincided with the decline of state funding for research, leaving

scientists

> in all areas of medicine dependent on pharmaceutical companies to fund or

> commission their work. That in turn gave the industry unprecedented

control

> over data and ended with research papers increasingly being drafted by

> company employees or commercial agencies..

>

> The responsibility of scientists for the content of their papers takes on

> serious significance in the context of court cases in the US, where

> relatives of people who killed themselves and murdered others while on

SSRIs

> (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) - the class of drug to which

> Prozac belongs - claimed the drugs were responsible. According to David

> Healy, a north Wales-based psychopharmacologist who has given evidence for

> the families, the companies have relied on articles apparently authored by

> scientists who may in fact have not seen the raw data..

>

> Dr Healy, who had unprecedented access to the data that the companies keep

> in their archives, said: " It may well be that 50% of the articles on drugs

> in the major journals across all areas of medicine are not written in a

way

> that the average person in the street expects them to be authored. "

>

> He cites the case brought last year against the former SmithKline Beecham

> (now GlaxoSmithKline) by relatives of Donald Schell. The court found that

> the company's best-selling antidepressant, an SSRI called Seroxat, had

> caused Schell to murder his wife, daughter and granddaughter and commit

> suicide..

>

> The company's defence was based on scientific papers which analysed the

> results of trials comparing Seroxat with a placebo and found there was no

> increased risk of suicide for depressed people on Seroxat. But the raw

data

> probably does not support that, argues Dr Healy. Some of the placebo

> suicides took place while patients were withdrawing from an older drug.

When

> the figures are readjusted without these, he says, they show there is

> substantially increased risk of suicide on Seroxat..

>

> This raises the question of whether the eminent scientists whose names

were

> on the papers ever saw the raw data from the trials - or saw only tables

> compiled by company employees, he says. David Dunner, a professor at the

> University of Washington, who co-authored one of the papers in 1995,

admits

> he did not see the raw data. " I don't know who saw it. I did not, " he

said..

> " My role in the paper was that the data were presented to us and we

analysed

> it and wrote it up and wrote references. "

>

> His co-author Stuart Montgomery, then of St Mary's hospital medical school

> in London, declined to answer calls and emails from the Guardian. The

third

> name on the paper is that of Geoff Dunbar, a company employee..

>

> The World Health Organisation has expressed concern about the ties between

> industry and researchers. Jonathan Quick, director of essential drugs and

> medicines policy, wrote in the latest WHO Bulletin: " If clinical trials

> become a commercial venture in which self-interest overrules public

interest

> and desire overrules science, then the social contract which allows

research

> on human subjects in return for medical advances is broken. "

>

>

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