Scandal of scientists who take money for papers ghostwritten by drug companies
Doctors named as authors who may not even have seen the raw raw data.
Sarah Boseley, Health Editor
Guardian (London), 7 Feb 2002
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.
...
rest of the article is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,646078,00.html
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