Corruption and the nexus between medical journals and the pharmaceutical industry.

[Guest guest]

Medica.l journals & Big Pharma bryonia

 

Another slant on how articles such as the Lancet piece come to be written:

 

Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) for 25 years, wrote a

piece this May on how pharmaceutical companies use medical journals to promote

their drugs (http://medicine.plosjournals.org, 18 May 2005). They have refined

the art of designing clinical trials and studies that provide the results they

want -- and the journals love to print positive stories.

 

And how do the drug companies create trials that increase their chances of a

favorable result? According to Smith, they:

 

1) Conduct a trial of their drug against a treatment known to be inferior;

2) Conduct a trial in which the competitor drug is given at too low a dose to be

effective (or too high a dose, which makes it seem more toxic than the

company's drug);

3) Conduct trials too small to show differences from the competition;

4) Use multiple endpoints in trials (or do multicenter trials, or conduct

subgroup analyses) -- and select only those that give favorable results for

publication;

5) Structure the results so they're more likely to impress (e.g., a reduction in

relative risk, not absolute risk).

 

So be aware of these deck-stackers when next you read a medical journal article.

Then go out & see " The Constant Gardener. "

 

Peace,

Cinnabar