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Merck's Deleted Data
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a Forbes article describing a drug study tampering proven by software. From the article: "A top editor of The New England Journal of Medicine says that he was stunned to find out that data linking Vioxx to cardiovascular risk was deleted from a major study his journal published five years ago--and that it appears that Merck researchers may have deleted that data ... When you hover the cursor over the editing changes, the identity of the editor pops up, and it just says 'Merck'"
You'd think after all the high profile cases of stuff like this happening, companies would be more careful with the revision history system. Guess not...
This shows that the drug industry is only after one thing: money. And lots of it.
An entire multi-national corporation brought down by Microsoft's TrackChanges feature...
"I was somewhere between surprised and stunned," Dr. Gregory Curfman, executive editor of The Journal, says. "They allowed us to publish an article that was just incomplete and inaccurate in some respects and was misleading and may have contributed to the detriment to the public health. " (emphasis added)
Now why would you allow to publish such inconclusive studies at all ? Is this journal peer-reviewed ? It would be interesting to see if they also publish the comments from the anonymous reviewers ? Did they agree about the paper before it got published ?
Is anyone here shocked by this?
I know this thread is going to turn into a huge gripe on massive corporations and how corrupt and evil and bad they are... but... considering the company is being publicly humilated, it's stock is trading at half the price it was a 2 years ago, and it's hemorrhaging jobs. I think it's fair to say the free market is correctly punishing this big business that is supposedly "running the world". But that's just me.
The only problem with this is that this information is easily forged. It would be VERY EASY for someone to frame someone else this way. I'm not saying Merck didn't do it in this case. I'm just saying that even someone with no computer knowledge can change their user name in Word, make some changes, and have it appear as if someone else made the edit.
Which president? Both Clinton and Bush strongly asserted that Iraq had WMDs during their tenure.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
And how many people had their health sacrificed to get us to this point? For that matter, what punishment is occurring to those who did the evil deeds?
Nope, the free market is doing too little to late, as always.
And, BTW - it's not the corporation that's corrupt and evil, it's the people at the top of the corporations, who are immune to the evil that they do, unless they make mistakes in covering up their deeds.
And all the people they killed got up and went back to work... oh wait, no they didn't.
Not one punishment dished out now will bring those people back to life, but if it will keep another drug company from ever trying another stunt like this, then we want it to be trading at 50 cents.
In the end though, all that will happen is the company will be sued into oblivion, a handful of lawyers will get rich, a lot of hardworking people who did nothing wrong will be out looking for jobs, and the CxOs and upper management will go work for their golf buddies at some other drug company where they'll do it again, but this time they'll be more careful so nobody figures it out when all these old people start dropping like flies. It's time to stop treating corporations like they're special and ditch the corporate veil once and for all. Arrest the people who authorized the release of the drug without the heart attack warning and charge them with murder (premeditated, they knew this was a side effect and that precautions that could have been taken would not be without that information (like not prescribing it to people with a history of heart problems, or prescribing it in combination with a drug that could otherwise counteract the risk... or hell, just telling the patient that when they're on the drug, if they feel a pain in their chest, it's probably not the same kind of "heartburn" they might be used to)). Require them to sell their mansions and yachts and pay the lawsuit costs and settlements and declare personal bankruptcy while they're sitting around in prison wondering whether their greed was worth it.
I doubt the economy would keep bad people from doing bad things. However, if all corporate executives were held to task for their intentional failures, we would likely see less of this sort of thing. The problem, in my opinion, isn't capitalism, it seems more like the current incarnation of capitalism that has spawned mega-corporations where the "bad people" can often hide behind the faceless 'entity'. We're doing better now than we were at the start of the 20th century, but we still have much we can improve upon, personal responsibility and liability are at the top of the list (IMO).
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Better late than never.
You blame this on a free market? I just blame it on dishonesty and stupidity.
Has anyone else noticed 100 million gallons of carcenogenic fluid flowing from China lately?
Of course you probabbly consider China not communist enough either.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I'm not arguing one side ot the other. My point is simply that there are two points of view and it is not so black and white.
Holy crap I am tired of this libertarian bullshit that is so popular these days. Yeah, get rid of the FDA, and let a for profit company (no way anyone could bribe them, amirite?) do the testing etc..... god I can barely type a reply to this, it's so mind-numbingly stupid.
Oh... and check the stock price of Merck and see just how much damage this whole thing has actually done. There is ONE GODDAMNED DIP, and it is when the FDA PULLED THE STOCK FROM THE SHELVES. Investors will continue to invest in companies that do despicable things because NEWSFLASH: people are greedy.
You "the market will solve all our problems" people really confuse the hell out of me.