Tag Archives: ghost writing

Beware the ghost(writer)s of medical research

How ghostwriting feeds Big Pharma profits – Big Pharma firms spend twice as much on promotion as on research and development (R&D). But it is worse than that: more and more medical R&D is organized as promotional campaigns to make physicians aware of products. The bulk of the industry’s external funding for research now goes to contract research organizations to produce studies that feed into large numbers of articles submitted to medical journals.

Internal documents from Pfizer, made public in litigation, showed that 85 scientific articles on its antidepressant Zoloft were produced and coordinated by a public relations company. Pfizer itself thus produced a critical mass of the favourable articles placed among the 211 scientific papers on Zoloft in the same period. Internal documents tell similar stories for Merck’s Vioxx, GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil, Astra-Zeneca’s Seroquel, and Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs.

Profiting from mental ill-health

There’s a reason psychiatrists prescribe drugs rather than talking therapy: the latter makes no money for pharmaceutical firms. The New York Times recently led with a front-page splash about psychiatry’s propensity to prescribe pills, “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy”. That news is already widely known in the mental health field, but it has vast ramifications for Americans trying to maintain their sanity in our market-driven and medical system for delivering mental healthcare. What does the turn to drug therapy mean for the mass of Americans?

U.S. Sen Grassley-Demanding transparency for Pharma funds paid to doctors, researchers, patient ‘advocacy’ groups

Senator Chuck Grassley has asked leading medical schools to describe their policies on ghostwriting as part of his continuing effort to shed light on financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and medical professionals. “I’m interested in transparency, and academic institutions play an important role in establishing adequate and meaningful disclosure,” he said. Grassley also has conducted oversight and sought disclosure with physicians, continuing medical education and the patient advocacy community.

In the wake of U.S. Senator Charles Grassley investigations, Medical Editors Push for Ghostwriting Crackdown

In light of recently released evidence that some drug makers have gone to great lengths to turn scientific articles into marketing vehicles for their products, some influential medical editors are cracking down on industry-financed ghostwriting. And they are getting help from some members of Congress.

U.S. Senator charges “scientific” support of drugs often written by Pharma ghost writers

The full scope of the ghostwriting problem is still unclear, but recent revelations suggest that the practice is widespread. Dozens of medical education companies across the country draft scientific papers at the behest of drug makers. And placing such papers in medical journals has become a fundamental marketing practice for most of the large pharmaceutical companies.