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The pharmaceutical industry is attempting to deflect accusations about what many see as its role in the corruption of science.
The trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which also represents biotechnology companies, issued guidelines in late September targeting some of the industry’s more reprehensible pseudo-scientific practices.One of the guidelines seeks to ban ghostwriting for medical journals. Here’s how it works:A drug company hires a skilled medical writer to report on the results of a company-sponsored clinical trial in a way that subtly emphasizes the benefits and downplays — or omits — the risks. The drug company then pays a scientist to be listed as the lead author of the study.When the article is submitted to a medical journal for publication, the ghostwriter’s role is omitted. The journal, relying on the honor system, believes the scientist is being honest and publishes what it believes is a credible piece of research.The result: The drug company uses the journal’s shroud of credibility to market its product using scientific evidence it paid for and results it controlled.The "author" pockets dirty money and leverages the false credit for prestige and academic stature. Doctors are duped and their patients are sometimes harmed.For example, an Annals of Internal Medicine ghostwritten paper on a Merck-sponsored painkiller Vioxx clinical trial did not disclose the deaths of several patients. The lead author told The New York Times: "Merck designed the trial, paid for the trial, ran the trial. . . . The initial paper was written at Merck and then it was sent to me for editing."Vioxx was eventually pulled off the market in 2004 after it was linked to heart problems.Nearly 8 percent of the articles published by six of the top U.S. medical journals in 2008 were written by ghostwriters, according to a survey released last month by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Imagine the outrage if you discovered that 8 percent of the government or business stories in the Star-Telegram were ghostwritten by public relations personnel of local governments or corporations. Because you don’t know which 8 percent were corrupted, you would tend to believe they all were. Even if that were true — and I assure you it’s not — at least our ethically challenged behavior would not be potentially life-threatening.Ghostwriting is academia’s version of plagiarism, which in the newspaper business almost always results in immediate dismissal.The editor of Lancet, a leading British medical journal, remarked in 2006, "Journals have devolved into information-laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry."The historically lucrative pharmaceutical industry is struggling to maintain its share of the healthcare dollar. Worldwide sales are expected to decline in 2010 because of increased sales of generics and the global recession. In 2005, the industry spent $71 billion on marketing and promotion — more than twice what it spent on research and development.
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