Merck Created Phony Peer-Review Medical Journal

Hugh Pickens writes "Don't believe everything you read on the internet is a good rule to follow, but it turns out that you can't even believe a 'peer reviewed scientific journal' as details emerge that drug manufacturer Merck created a phony, but real sounding, peer-review journal titled the 'Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine' to publish data favorable to its products. 'What's sad is that I'm sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...."' writes Summer Johnson in a post on the website of the American Journal of Bioethics. One Australian rheumatologist named Peter Brooks who served as an 'honorary advisory board' to the journal didn't receive a single paper for peer-review in his entire time on the board, but it didn't bother him because he apparently knew the journal did not receive original submissions of research. All this is probably not too surprising in light of Merck's difficulties with Vioxx, the once $2.5 billion a year drug that was pulled from the market in September 2004, after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in long-term users resulting in payments by Merck of $4.85 billion to settle personal injury claims from former users, but it bears repeating that 'if physicians would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.'"

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I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's future!

[spun]

Oh no. They will get a fine far less than the money they made doing it, which is corp-speak for "please keep doing it." None of the executives will get any time. None of the doctors involved will get a reprimand, heck, this is just an advertisement that they play ball. On to the next corporate gig.

Does it ever work?

[__aanmys7397]

Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times? Doesn't the availability of everything on the Internet ensure that someone somewhere, doing just a little research, will call 'bullshit' when a certain journal/reviewer goes overboard in praising just one company?

Re:Does it ever work?

[Airw0lf]

Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times? Doesn't the availability of everything on the Internet ensure that someone somewhere, doing just a little research, will call 'bullshit' when a certain journal/reviewer goes overboard in praising just one company?

The problem is that companies never get more than a slap on the wrist for pulling stunts like this - commercial regulatory bodies in most countries are far too easy on them. As a previous poster said, it is usually a token fine and none of the executives ever get jailed. So I guess most companies do a simple calculation along the lines of:

Profit = Initial Sales from Lies - Estimated Fine when Caught - Dip in Sales from Bad Publicity.

It would seem that the "Profit" term still comes out as a big number so there is no real disincentive there unless regulatory bodies clean up their act, or the public starts voting with their dollars in a significant fashion.

Re:Does it ever work?

[interkin3tic]

Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times?

Yes, I established an advertisement disguised as a medical journal for my company that hasn't yet been outed as a shill. It's called...

Wait... you clever bastard, you almost had me with that one.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that companies never get more than a slap on the wrist for pulling stunts like this - commercial regulatory bodies in most countries are far too easy on them.

It would seem that the "Profit" term still comes out as a big number so there is no real disincentive there unless regulatory bodies clean up their act, or the public starts voting with their dollars in a significant fashion.

While I normally agree on voting with dollars, not here. When it comes to medicine, we need to get best service possible in each individual case. If one company has best medicine for certain problem, it should be chosen. As a patient, I don't want to think about "What drug companies have shady history?" (hell, I couldn't name five drug companies if I had to but... I never have had to.) and I certainly don't want my doctor to give me inferior medicine because his ethics tell him to boycott a company...

I think that boycott should be reserved for things that can't or perhaps even shouldn't be regulated by government (IE. what companies do in other countries) but are disliked by you. When it is about a drug company giving fake info about itself and playing with our lives... There should be far stricter government regulation, not boycott.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Lije Baley]

Not really. This is just another "stupid salesperson" trick. I doubt anyone at the company really gave this much thought. It's just some idiot salesman "thinking outside the box."

Re:Does it ever work?

[jipn4]

If one company has best medicine for certain problem, it should be chosen

Sure, it should be chose... to lose its patent protection.

I don't want to think about "What drug companies have shady history?

Well, but you have to think about it, because if the company cheated on the other drug, there's a good chance that the drug that you want to take also doesn't do what the company claims.

Also, I think you're greatly overestimating the differences between drugs. Most drugs that drug companies make are useless: there are either generic equivalents that are just as good, or they are lifestyle drugs--something you could fix with nutrition and exercise.

Re:Does it ever work?

[barzok]

If one company has best medicine for certain problem, it should be chosen. As a patient, I don't want to think about "What drug companies have shady history?" (hell, I couldn't name five drug companies if I had to but... I never have had to.) and I certainly don't want my doctor to give me inferior medicine because his ethics tell him to boycott a company.

If the company has a known shady history, how can you know for sure that their "best medicine for a certain problem" hasn't been propped up by bad/false studies and publications like this fake Merck one?

Re:Does it ever work?

[erroneus]

You are SERIOUSLY overestimating the value of medicine.

Many of the most significant advances in medical science over the past 100 years has to do with a better understanding of nutrition and hygiene. The fact is, "we know better" than to each much of the crap we eat which often leads to sicknesses we wouldn't otherwise get. Quite a few medicines suppress or weaken your immune system as well.

Yes, there are times in life when medications are necessary, I won't deny it. But those times are actually quite rare. But you can't build a huge industry on rare. We already know what Merck and companies like them are prepared to do in order to sell more drugs to people, so it wouldn't be stupid to look into your own medicine cabinet to see what you don't actually need.

Aspirin is good medicine. Nothing has completely replaced it. They will sell you a lot of more advanced things, but aspirin is good and it's "inferior." Quite often things are sold as newer or superior when it is actually quite the same as the thing before it but with a new combination of components or manufacturing process and most importantly, "A New Patent!" Be careful about that.

I have found that from the time I have become more aware of what I put into my body, the more healthy I have become. Eating less, eating less junk food, drinking less soda and the like are some pretty obvious ones, and are also the ones quite a few people lack the will-power to cut down on in the first place. But you could easily dig deeper into the rabbit hole -- for example, "high fructose corn syrup" is responsible for a lot of pancreatic disorders in people... a little won't hurt you, but when it's in everything you eat? Adult animals don't naturally drink milk -- it's for babies. So why do humans think they "need" it? We know why, we just don't think to question if it's true.

Prevention is truly the best way to play this game. But from the government on down, no one wants to talk about prevention when they talk about the healthcare system.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Agreed.

I've already begun to do this. I look for doctors who prescribe drugs only as a last resort. If they offer me a sample of something to try, I know that I've just become a guinea pig for a drug that the doctor received from a marketing campaign - and he probably didn't read the studies that vetted the drug in the first place.

With regard to Merck, it looks like this:

"Gosh, we pretty much own every G8 legislature, especially the US Congress, we're the largest lobby in the world, with some of the highest profit margins, with plenty of protection from competition, and yet, we still don't have complete control of everything. Let's create a fake journal so our drugs can pass the regulatory rigor. We can all sleep better knowing that we have our own prestigious medical journal to rely upon."

The change I want to see starts with a lifestyle change by me, because the drug companies won't change unless I do. I try to start with me first and see what happens.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Reservoir Penguin]

You are a seriously enlightened person, but most western people subscribe to a completely different mode of thinking, if they get an uncomfortable symptom bothering them they just want to take a quick pill to get rid of it for a time. A pill for headache, for bloated stomach, for diarrhoea, for heartburn, just take a pill and go on with your lifestyle until you make it into your 60s and are a wreck kept alive by a cabinet full of drugs. This is the true value of western medicine. It doesn't occur to them that most symptoms are a sign of a lack of balance in the body that can be "treated" and prevented by regular exercise and a healthy diet. Or that eating microwave ready shit that has been shipped half across the globe and frozen and refrozen countless times and stuffed full of preservatives and artificial flavourings simply can't be healthy by common sense alone.

Re:Does it ever work?

[russotto]

Many of the most significant advances in medical science over the past 100 years has to do with a better understanding of nutrition and hygiene. The fact is, "we know better" than to each much of the crap we eat which often leads to sicknesses we wouldn't otherwise get. Quite a few medicines suppress or weaken your immune system as well.

So precisely what is it we eat that causes arthritis (the most common indication for Vioxx)?

Aspirin is good medicine. Nothing has completely replaced it. They will sell you a lot of more advanced things, but aspirin is good and it's "inferior." Quite often things are sold as newer or superior when it is actually quite the same as the thing before it but with a new combination of components or manufacturing process and most importantly, "A New Patent!" Be careful about that.

Aspirin is good. But it has negative effects, like promoting ulcers, particularly with long-term use. It also has a dose-response relationship for pain relief which levels off, though the side-effects continue to get worse. And it's a fairly short-acting medication. The COX-2 inhibitors relieve pain better, for longer, with fewer gastrointestinal side effects. They also slightly increase the chance of heart attack, which is why most of them got banned, but IMO that's a foolish trade of quantity of life for quality of life.

Re:Does it ever work?

[CrankinOut]

Quantifications such as "quite a few," "quite rare," and "quite often," are non-quantifications which sound meaningful, but carry no information.

Having clean water availability and adequate sewerage disposal are most responsible for reducing enteric transmitted infections, as that is their means of transmission. That's been documented in public health studies. However, there's no evidence that such issues have anything to do with cancer incidence (as has been proven with smoking and lung cancer), or heart disease (smoking again).

Medications, like anything else, have both benefits and limitations. The desire to find a better medication comes from identifying the weaknesses and seeking a modification that has a similar benefit with a reduced limitation. Regarding antibiotics, bacteria evolve to be drug-resistant to a particular drug (if you kill the bugs that are sensitive to the drug, the relatively insensitive ones become the dominant population. Multiple drug resistant tuberculosis is a good example).

Eating good, healthy food makes good common sense, and highly nutritious foods without unnecessary calorie-loaded additives (such as high-fructose corn syrup) are a good choice.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/565/

Re:Does it ever work?

[PCM2]

And in other news: A local twenty-something male has found that he's in perfect health and has no need for medical care. Story at 11.

Re:Does it ever work?

[muridae]

And many people are seriously underestimating the value of medicine. Take a long hard look at your self. How many of you would have survived your first 10 years without, what was then, modern medicine? I know I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have my it the first three days.

To answer the issues you raise, Aspirin sucks as a pain killer, and is only marginally better than the willow bark it replaced. It can cause or contribute to, over the long term, multiple stomach and blood disorders. It inhibits clotting of the blood, promotes stomach bleeding which can lead to other problems. APAP, the other common pain killer, may do more for fevers but does nothing for swelling, and causes liver damage in high doses. And those 'high doses' are fairly close to what is listed, on the bottle, as a daily dose.

Milk, calcium. As humans live longer, we no longer have the calcium supply in our bones to last our entire adult life. Wasn't a problem when most people died before 10, and adults lived to 30 to 60. And beyond that, how long have humans been drinking milk for? 2000 years? A quick google search turned up references suggesting 9000 years ago. If this is 'modern diet' then I suggest you also give up your cultivated grains; modern corn that doesn't need to be soaked in lye to be eaten, domesticated grains that produce a usable yield per acre, modern fruits with larger eatable portions and more vitamins.

Sure, your rabbit hole goes deeper, but you are following it to conspiracy-thinking that doesn't make one bit of sense. While you want to justify avoiding 'modern medicine', you are making arguments that simple logic will prove are not true. For the sake of the rest of the people who might read this, continue with your lifestyle of choice on your own, but present your next argument supported with facts and not just your opinion of how bad medicine is.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to IdahoEv's post:

It is debatable if aspirin is a good drug.

The COX-1/COX-2 selectivity is poor, and the use of aspirin doubles the risk of a severe GI event which is the reason why selective COX-2 inhibitors were developed (rofecoxib (VIOXX), celeboxib, etoricoxib).

Just because a drug has a simple structure, and a history in the drug landscape does not classify it as a good drug.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16086703
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12604155

Re:Does it ever work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget plumbing. In the past many diseases were spread via bad water, eg Cholera, Typhoid or Dysentery. Now that we have systems for treating sewage and preventing it from infecting our potable water, they're almost unknown in the Western world.

Re:Does it ever work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.

Re:Does it ever work?

[erroneus]

I hope you aren't suggesting I'm 20-something. I'm 40-something now and doing a LOT better than I was when I was 20-something. I wish I knew then what I know now about health and nutrition...

Holy crap.

[palegray.net]

I've seen a lot of seedy stuff in my time, but this might just take the cake with respect to all-time industry lows. To hell with the music industry; this is beyond reprehensible. They're playing with peoples' lives. Somebody please tell me someone's going to jail for this.

Re:Holy crap.

[oldhack]

Careful, son. You know not the power of the evil you're belittling.

Re:Holy crap.

[alvinrod]

I suppose it's fitting that you've been modded funny considering that if anyone does actually go to jail for this it won't be anyone actually in charge or ultimately responsible. Rich people don't go to jail. If they do somehow end up in jail, it's not the jail you or I would end up in under similar charges.

The only real way to hurt these assholes is to completely boycott their company and products and tank their company. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they won't land on their feet, but anything else is just wishful thinking.

Re:Holy crap.

[MichaelSmith]

I've seen a lot of seedy stuff in my time, but this might just take the cake with respect to all-time industry lows.

How about drug companies treating thousands of doctors to a free night out in a posh restaurant every week for years, so that they can be informed about the latest products.

Re:Holy crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, *all* of the Vioxx users I know are suffering from the forced boycott. See ... Vioxx isn't all that bad. The risk of death was pretty low compared to living in pain all the fucking time. But no, only talk radio mentioned that part. There are literally millions of people suffering now who would be willing to take the chance of death to be able to live again.

I know, the solution is government health care, with absolutely no accountability at all. It fucking near killed me. Trust Obama with the foreign policy -- much better then Bush. Trust "civil servants" with your life? Retarded!

Re:Holy crap.

[ArghBlarg]

You know what, it's great that some people you know were helped by Vioxx. That's honestly great.

But that in *no* way excuses the fact that, due to the drug company's *blatant lies* about the possible effects that it may have, some other people you DON'T know, may have FRICKING DIED from Vioxx.

But hey, if the people who were baldly deceived by drug companies' LIES and died/suffered as a result were all people YOU DIDN'T KNOW PERSONALLY, then that's totally OK I guess.

The fact the company had to make a whole FAKE JOURNAL up to shove their product says volumes about how much confidence they really had about the product.

Re:Holy crap.

[drunkenoafoffofb3ta]

I think you're making the very big assumption that they made up the data AND the journal to promote their drug... andthe drug is bad.

More likely, they have a boring drug with boring results that's #4 to the market, with #3 efficacy. This is just laziness on merck's part so that reps can show results quickly. Don't worry. Doctors, in general, aren't stupid. They see right through this.

Re:Holy crap.

[bennomatic]

You're right. You know what? I'm canceling my vacation to Australasia in protest!

Re:Holy crap.

[blackest_k]

I don't know about Vioxx, but perhaps it's not the only drug out there that can help, or maybe the only one your health insurance company was willing to pay for.

My niece sufferers from junior rheumatoid arthritis, within a year of the symptoms first appearing she was in a wheelchair, eventually she managed to see a specialist who put her on to a new drug treatment and very rapidly she went from being wheelchair bound to being a healthy and normal teenager.

The treatment requires 2 injections a week at a cost of £500 a week, luckily this is in the UK and its paid for by the National Health Service, a system we all pay into from our pay packets. If she had been under the American system would she have this drug or would she still be in constant pain in a wheelchair? It took a year of trials of various different medicines before she was prescribed something effective but she has it now and will continue to have it for as long as its needed.

America is a great country but the health system is a complete disgrace. Hopefully Obama will address this issue.

Re:Holy crap.

[jackbird]

There's no overt deception in buying a doctor a steak. A doctor presumably has not recently fallen off a turnip truck and can recognize a sales pitch as such, and is also not unable to afford such things on their own. This is FAR more insidious and unethical.

Re:Holy crap.

[PCM2]

If I'm a salesman and you're a doctor, and my job is to sell stuff and your job is to save people's lives, and I offer you some money and you take it ... whose ethics are worse, mine or yours? Nobody is propping those doctors' mouths open and shoving steak in them.

And then again, coming at it from another angle, a doctor who is unaware of what new medications are coming to market isn't doing his job. What he needs to do is A.) hear the sales pitch, and B.) hit the journals to see if the pharma company's claims are backed up by evidence. This is where Merck lying about its products in a fake journal comes into play.

Re:Holy crap.

[muridae]

I couldn't answer that question without knowing what the drug was. But, in general, she may have gotten it if the doctor she went to was willing to participate in the drug trials.

Some doctors do, some don't. My understanding is that some branches of medicine are more willing to try new treatments, while others are less so. Older doctors, in my experience, tend to be less willing to put patients on something that hasn't been proven while younger doctors are more willing.

Because doctors in the American system work for profit, they have more to lose from participating in a trial of an unproven medicine. Imagine the hell you would have raised if this new drug had made her problems worse. Now imagine the problems the doctor in America would have faced under our litigation happy, high payout, medical 'protection' society.

Personally, I can't blame the doctors or the insurance for making the choices they make under this system. The system is the problem.

Re:Holy crap.

[HiThere]

I'm not sure that Vioxx should have been pulled. I *am* certain that Merck should have been punished *HARD* for the actions that they took to mute criticism. Those are two separate decisions.

An apt punishment would have been for Merck to loose all patent right to it's 5 most profitable patents.
(I'll admit that there's no legal basis for that, but there isn't a legal basis for most effective punishments to corporations.)

Re:Holy crap.

[HiThere]

Do blame the insurance companies. They actively lobby to maintain this system which you rightly call broken.

Re:Holy crap.

[muridae]

So do the doctors, so do the drug companies, so does everyone else who can afford it. It's one of the rational choices to make once the system devolves to the point where only lobbies get anything accomplished. Even religions have lobbying groups.

As individuals, each person in these groups may agree that the system is broken, but as a group it is not in their best interest to change anything. I don't blame the companies as an entity, but the individuals who lack the backbone to acknowledge the problems they are exploiting.

Re:Holy crap.

[moosesocks]

Seriously.

I received better medical care under in the UK as a foreign student than I ever did in America, despite having an impressively comprehensive health insurance plan.

Evidence-based medicine FTW.

Re:Holy crap.

[moosesocks]

[citation-needed]

I worked in big pharma for a time, and although I'm not entirely convinced that they're 100% innocent, I fail to see how medical marketing is particularly insidious, particularly under a private health system.

A new medical product is going to be useless unless doctors know about it, how/when to prescribe it, and how to avoid any complications (nobody wants a lawsuit).

Given that doctors have few incentives to research these things on their own (beyond a cursory level), marketing is a necessary evil to make sure that doctors learn about newer and more effective treatments for the conditions that they treat. This is particularly relevant, given that the government doesn't enforce any sort of powerful evidence-based-medicine regulations.

"Steak dinners" are also not exactly the norm (pens and post-its are, and cost close to nothing). Occasionally, pharma companies will offer incentives to doctors who participate in trials, or provide feedback to the company regarding the performance of their product. This information most certainly has a monetary value to the company.

Similarly, I don't believe that sales reps are actually aware of doctors' prescription-writing habits (especially due to patient confidentiality laws). There are quite a few steps in the sales/distribution chain between the manufacturer and the client. Any scheme under which a doctor 'gets a steak dinner for every 10 doses sold' however, would certainly be immoral.

Of course, the system is *far* from perfect. Doctors are encouraged to prescribe unnecessary treatments. Private medicine and HMOs are largely to blame. A fully-nationalized single-payer healthcare system that took responsibility for researching and practicing evidence-based medicine, and educating doctors about new treatment options would solve most of the complaints being discussed in this thread.

*EBM can be a nasty beast though. Nobody wants to hear that the government won't pay for your treatment because they don't believe that you're going to survive, or that a 20 year old who shows up at the ER will likely be treated before the 70 year old who showed up at the same time with the same condition. Even though these decisions are made every day at hospitals across America, there is certainly something dehumanizing about seeing it written in official policy.

Re:Holy crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

So??? As an IT Architect, I get treated to nice dinners at expansive restaurants by my vendors all the time... At the end of the day, I still have to do my due diligence and choose the right technologies for my clients need... You think that doctors believe all the beautiful powerpoint?

Re:Holy crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

The treatment requires 2 injections a week at a cost of £500 a week, luckily this is in the UK and its paid for by the National Health Service, a system we all pay into from our pay packets.

Does it cost £500 pw or, as I suspect is the case, is that the purchase price from the pharmacorp vastly inflated over the cost of production (including dev costs) because they're granted a monopoly via patents.

£26k a year is a substantial sum - I'm afraid given the current and forthcoming economic woes that the exchequer may have eventually to limit an individuals take.

This comment is Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the fact that all the previous comments were immediately moderated Funny, I suppose this one will be also.

Do Merck shills lurk on Slashdot trying to douse peoples' karma?????

I'm feeling cynical

[spun]

Corporations are people like you and I with a right to free speech. Merck is just presenting the scientific facts that are important to them. The so-called scientific method is just a cultural idea, not the final arbiter of 'Truth.' What is truth? Isn't it 'true' that Vioxx may have helped people? Isn't it 'true' that it didn't kill everyone?

The doctors are just looking out for themselves, and if they didn't do it, someone else would. And people's lives? Really now. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. So some people died.

Who is the government to tell people what they can and can't sell? People die all the time, but markets and corporations are eternal. Who is the government to tell people what they can and can't imbibe? Alcohol kills people, cigarettes kill people?

People die all the time, but markets and corporations are eternal. Doesn't that mean they are better than us? Who are we to tell them what to do? Oh sure, they are made up of people, but we're made up of cells. I know I don't care too much when I get a cut and a few skin and red blood cells sacrifice themselves for my well being.

In the end, a few people died so a corporation could grow. Is that so bad?

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[noidentity]

Heh, I just finished watching Bicentennial Man, and the robot/android wasn't given the status of a person until he gave himself a finite life span. Funny how imaginary people (who cannot be put in jail and never die) have more rights than any robot in the real world...

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[jonbryce]

You have a right to political free speech, but you do not have a right to commercial free speech. You also don't have a right to tell lies.

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[Anonymous Coward]

Pick a religion and then prove it to be false.

See you in a few hundred years.

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[colinrichardday]

The First Amendment makes no such distinction, though American judges may fail to respect the latter.

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[commodore64_love]

>>>Corporations are people like you and I with a right to free speech.

The *People* have a right to free speech. The corporation does not. It has no more right to free speech than a rock. If the Merck CEO wants to publish things in his own name (with jail-time if it turns-out his lies led to deaths), that's fine but Merck the soulless entity does not have rights. Only individuals have rights.

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[spun]

I really wish you were right. According to the Supreme Court, corporations are people with civil rights like you and I. Immortal people with orders of magnitude more power than an individual. Isn't that special?

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[Mikkeles]

The Supreme Court is wrong.

Re:I'm feeling cynical

[HiThere]

Actually, the Supreme Court has carefully never made a statement on that. That was written by a legal clerk. Case law based on that is precedent, but the precedent has no legal basis, and the Supreme Court has carefully allowed this condition to continue, because there's not legal basis to affirm it, but they like the results...and so do many other powerful people.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[!coward]

Apparently the mods had a good night out.. Every single comment so far has been moded "Funny". And I'm pretty sure most of them weren't. A poster further down suggests that we may be dealing with shills.. But I shudder to think that slashdot is such a high-profile news site for drug companies, that they'd bother. So I'm going with drunk/stoned or otherwise giddy mods getting their rocks off.

Hmm.. "2009 A H1N1 flu" (or whatever it is that they've decided to call it) doesn't mess with your brain like that, right? Heh, not to worry -- if they are infected, I'm sure it won't spread.. Who're they gonna infect from their Mom's basement anyway? (bad taste? too soon? ok, I apologize.. carry on)

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[JordanL]

if physicians would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.

Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?

I can understand why it would be a professional consideration for physicians to not assist something like this, but going after the publisher morally is crazy. Let's not start witch hunting now.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[davester666]

the article forgot ...and publishers would not offer their presses, AND MANUFACTURERS DID NOT OFFER THEIR MONEY TO SAID PHYSICIANS AND PUBLISHERS these publications could not exist

RRGH

[Anonymous Coward]

BURN

ahahaha

[benjamindees]

[citation needed]

And now an entire generation of idiots believe everything they read in such "authoritative sources" and distrust everything else.

Revolting!

[Kotoku]

I am nearly speechless. This is honestly one of the most revolting acts of subterfuge I've ever seen committed on the American People (well..other than our current issues). Merck creates phoney studies so they can pass potentially unsafe drugs to the masses?

They should be run out of town for this. Sadly I see nothing major happening to them.

Other stuff

[guyminuslife]

My father, who is a psychiatrist, was looking over a medical journal one day and showed me an article where some researcher---in a study funded by one of the drug companies, I forget which one---had determined that whatever SSRI the company was peddling was effective against bipolar disorder. This had been a six-week trial.

I didn't understand. My father explained to me that yes, SSRIs tend to be effective as short-term treatment for bipolar disorder, but that over the long term, they actually can make bipolar symptoms worse. So the study was cherry-picked: deceptive, because what is good in the short term can be bad in the long term. Many bipolar people get put on antidepressants, which are counterproductive. And doctors often go along with it, because the drug companies have been intentionally misleading them in publications.

Re:Other stuff

[oneirophrenos]

So the study was cherry-picked: deceptive, because what is good in the short term can be bad in the long term.

This is why drugs oughtn't be marketed to patients. If an ad says a drug has fared well in a study, Joe Regular will assume it's automatically a good thing. He doesn't know a good study from a bad one, or whether a medical journal is reputable - or even exists. A physician has a far greater probability of distinguishing bullshit from actual facts than a layperson, though it doesn't of course always hold true.

Re:Other stuff

[Yvanhoe]

Why is Joe allowed to choose his food then ?
Deceptive ads are illegal, stupidity is still legal. As long as Joe can freely get all the good information he needs, but uses his own money to buy shitty drugs, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Re:Other stuff

[jcr]

Why is Joe allowed to choose his food then ?

Careful. Start down that path, and the next thing you know the pinkos will be demanding National Lunch Insurance to defray the cost of the approved foods.

-jcr

Re:Other stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, we ARE talking about prescription drugs here. If we accept that a substance is so dangerous (at least potentially, when used the wrong way, in the wrong situation etc.) that Joe should not be able to buy it at all on his own, then the notion that it shouldn't be advertised to him either makes sense. Or, put another way - if a drug can be advertised to him, then how do you justify not allowing him to buy it?

There's also the issue of truth (and lies) in advertising. Cherry-picking studies to create an impression that medication FOO will help with condition BAR when in reality, it will actually and demonstrably make it worse, should be illegal as well. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is - the relevant laws just aren't enforced the way they should be.

Re:Other stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very much in the corporate character - short term benefit always wins.

Re:Other stuff

[bennomatic]

It's like the old Pepsi challenge. Pepsi typically wins in the "sip" test, even among Coke fans. Why does Coke outsell Pepsi 2:1 worldwide, then? Well, drinking a whole can is a whole different experience from taking a sip.

Re:Other stuff

[barzok]

This is why drugs oughtn't be marketed to patients. If an ad says a drug has fared well in a study, Joe Regular will assume it's automatically a good thing.

I, for one, would love to see prescription drug advertising banned. The US and New Zealand are the only "developed" countries where it's not banned. I don't even understand the point - it's 10 seconds of hokey conversations about what it's for, followed by 20 seconds of "but you really ought to talk to your doctor about it, because it's got these massive side effects." My favorite right now is the Advair commercial which tells you that one of the side effects of this asthma medication is death by asthma! The treatment really is worse than the disease.

That's like saying Lipitor will make your arteries completely clog, or Imitrex will make your head explode.

But what would we watch during commercial breaks?

Re:Other stuff

[Mutatis Mutandis]

Keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies don't have full freedom in the design of trials. It is, fortunately, a very highly regulated activity.

This trial was probably reviewed by boards of experts and blessed by the regulatory organizations, who approved both the length of the study and the criteria for enrolment. A six-week study may very well produce misleading results, I couldn't comment on that, but it would not be the first time people defined stupid plans with the best of intentions. Typically trials are kept at a minimal length at first to reduce the risk to the volunteers, and then gradually extended in later phases of development.

Re:Other stuff

[maxume]

I like the Aciphex commercials, because spelling it that way doesn't stop if from sounding like Assiphex and I giggle.

Re:Other stuff

[tomhudson]

Why is Joe allowed to choose his food then ?

So you should be allowed to choose milk laced with melamine? Meat with salmonella? Rancid Starkist tuna?

The tainted Star-Kist tuna scandal

Broadcast Date: Sept. 17, 1985
What became known as "Tunagate" erupts after this Fifth Estate report airs on Sept. 17, 1985. The CBC's Eric Malling reveals that Progressive Conservative Fisheries Minister John Fraser had knowingly approved a million cans of rancid Star-Kist tuna for sale. Fraser ignored numerous reports declaring that the tuna with the "powerful smell" was unfit for human consumption. Star-Kist Canada Inc. and New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield were pressuring Fraser in order to protect the 400 jobs at the St. Andrew's, N.B., plant.

Before Tunagate, Star-Kist, the largest employer in New Brunswick's Charlotte County, had enjoyed a 39 per cent market share. But that share collapsed to near zero following the scandal. The company eventually pulled out of Canada and the 400 employees at the St. Andrew's, N.B., plant lost their jobs.

Just when and how much Prime Minister Brian Mulroney knew about the events leading up to Tunagate was never made clear. Mulroney initially said he knew about the decision to sell the tainted tuna but later recanted, saying he only learned about the affair when the CBC's The Fifth Estate story aired. Mulroney was also accused by the Opposition of not telling the whole truth when he told the New York Times he had fired Fraser as soon as he had heard of the affair. In fact, it had taken six days.

Weeks after the Tunagate scandal broke, baseball fans booed Mulroney during the opening game of the American League championship playoffs in Toronto by chanting: "Tuna! Tuna! Tuna!"

Re:Other stuff

[cvd6262]

A physician has a far greater probability of distinguishing bullshit from actual facts than a layperson, though it doesn't of course always hold true.

As a PhD who has spent many evening hours explaining medical journal statistics to my physician brother, I would emphasize that last part. Medical schools in the U.S. train future professionals in the practice of medicine, not research. (I'm not saying one is better than the other.) Once I realized this, I started noticing all sorts of comments from physicians that demonstrated their lack of research training.

It's a real issue with no real solution. Expecting an MD to take more stats and research coursework is really not reasonable. Giving non-medically trained PhDs authority over prescriptions isn't really an option either.

Re:Other stuff

[level_headed_midwest]

As a medical school student in the U.S., we have probably as many if not more non-physician PhDs that are teaching us about their research topics (called "basic science") that do not have all that much for clinical applications in the first two years of medical school as we do physicians teaching us about highly-relevant clinical topics. There is a VERY strong push to try to get medical school students to go into academic medicine at the very least, if not do an MD-PhD program and become a full-time academic. That kind of thing must be going on nationwide as there is a lot of the research topic information being tested on the first part of the national United States Medical Licensing Exam. It's really not until the third and fourth years of medical school that the research topics take a backseat to clinical material.

Re:Other stuff

[Yvanhoe]

Well, how do you explain that Joe manages to get things right while buying milk and detergeant at the *same place* ?
I guess it is all about education and labelling. Have a nice media scare or two about automedication and people will learn enough to not do stupid things.

Re:Other stuff

[Lost Engineer]

If we accept that a substance is so dangerous that Joe should not be able to buy it at all on his own

I do not.

Re:Other stuff

[PCM2]

I love the ones that say something like, "Namubitol ... so you can live with confidence again. Ask your doctor."

Re:Other stuff

[PCM2]

Well, drinking a whole can is a whole different experience from taking a sip.

You seriously think that's the whole story? These companies have been engaged in an all-out war for global market share for decades. Trying to reduce it to "but Coke tastes better" only makes you sound like a sucker.

Re:Other stuff

[muridae]

I hate to say that I've met psychiatrist who believed these studies. When asked directly about it, I got the story that "No, this wasn't a classic SSRI, but a new class of SNDRI." It wasn't, mind you, but getting to that information would have required picking up a heavy chemistry book or something, instead of a light-weight journal.

Give your father a pat on the back. Both for not believing that article, and for passing the information along to someone else.

Re:Other stuff

[guyminuslife]

Awesome; I've got some extra canisters of mustard gas I've been trying to get off my hands.

Re:Other stuff

[guyminuslife]

"May cause sudden euphoric death."

Re:Other stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either in a developing country, or New Zealand or USA. The rest of us have our drugs marketed directly to doctors where it's most effective.
In Australia you can't even promote a prescription-only drug to a policy writer, hospital executive, nurse or even to a pharmacist - drugs may only be marketed to the person whose responsibility it is to make a decision, generally a doctor or a dentist. There are some exceptions for drugs a nurse or pharmacist may dispense.
The only drug advertising you see in Australia is for brand-name paracetamol or ibuprofin, antibacterial gargle, anti-perspirants, and in-pharmacy for weight-loss drugs or in-clinic for vaccines or botox (depending on the type of clinic).

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[retchdog]

They took money to publish, discreetly, something which appeared to be peer-reviewed research but wasn't (including steps to avoid academicians even noticing, such as not creating web/electronic access). It's corruption plain and simple. How the hell can you possibly think there's nothing morally wrong with this? You're either a troll, shill, or moron. There are no other possibilities, which one is it?

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[techno-vampire]

Who're they gonna infect from their Mom's basement anyway?

My Mom's house doesn't have a basement, you inconsiderate clod! I live in her den!

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[Stormwatch]

My Mom's house doesn't have a basement, you inconsiderate clod! I live in her den!

Your mom's a furry?

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[JordanL]

A publisher takes words that someone wants to print, and recreates them in a distributable format.

What happens in your perfectly black and white world if Joomla is used by Al-Qaeda to plot an attack?

They took money to do their fucking job.

Because I disagree with a premise, yet not the conclusion, I'm either a troll, shill or moron. Slashdot at its finest. Sounds like a faith based argument to me.

Well now...

[toby]

Who's to say only the "American people" got fucked over? It's usually the rest of us.

When some greedy corporation in the US gets the urge to over-reach common sense in the name of profit, people die. Hello Halliburton, Blackwater - sorry, "Xe" - Merck, Chevron, Shell, Union Carbide, Monsanto - This is going on all around you, every day. It's just the kind of business y'all have been trained to tolerate, encourage and sponsor. And let's be frank, the absurd US military budget is largely what it is so that they can keep doing it with impunity. Nice little system.

If a corporation is legally a person, then let them be shut down and incarcerated like the murderers and thieves they are.

Re:Well now...

[G-Man]

Umm, you are aware that Shell is a *Dutch*, company, right? Getting a little blood on your hands for a few extra dollars/pounds/yen/euros/whatever is hardly just an American corporate phenomenon. TotalFinaElf was plenty happy to develop oil fields for Hussein under the utterly corrupt Oil for Food program, while ordinary Iraqis starved. Toshiba illegally sold submarine propeller tech to the Soviet Union. Shall we even get started on Chinese companies and food safety?

Re:Well now...

[mjwx]

Umm, you are aware that Shell is a *Dutch*, company, right? Getting a little blood on your hands for a few extra dollars/pounds/yen/euros/whatever is hardly just an American corporate phenomenon. TotalFinaElf was plenty happy to develop oil fields for Hussein under the utterly corrupt Oil for Food program, while ordinary Iraqis starved. Toshiba illegally sold submarine propeller tech to the Soviet Union. Shall we even get started on Chinese companies and food safety?

Whilst I agree that this is a global phenomena, US corporations are the foremost experts at it.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[sunwukong]

Ok, now where are all the funny funny modding moderators?

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[spun]

People need to be informed of the other kinds of 'jobs' that the companies they do business with perform. It will help them make rational decisions about who they want to do business with. Where they want to get their books published, where they want to get their colon checked, who they want to buy their drugs from, you know, that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, people do not like it to be known that they are in the side business of helping kill random strangers. It tends to put a damper on business. So we have governments and courts. But the word never seems to get out to enough people, and it is just ever so easy to ignore the deaths of random strangers. They are just a statistic connected at one remove to the publisher of a fake journal.

Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia, to print and put up a bunch of fliers offering $10,000 for your nut sack, JordanL? And suppose your nut sack is delivered to the mafia, should I be partially liable for your loss?

Fosomax is crazy stuff

[Wheat]

Fosomax is a crazy drug, it stops bone turnover and in some cases has lead to patients having to have their jaw bone removed. That's nasty!

    """
    Raisor was told her jaw bone was going to end up in a bucket. "They took some out, took some out, kept taking more out," Raisor said.

    They tried to save what they could. They used a metal plate for reinforcement.

    It didn't work.
    """

http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=4911501&nav=0RZF

Re:Fosomax is crazy stuff

[SUB7IME]

It's called 'jaw osteonecrosis', generally associated with high-dose bisphosphonates used for cancer treatment.

Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I was skeptical about this this periodical since their "Bestiality" issue, which had the title headline: "Give a dog a bone."

Bones? Joints?

Oh, never mind, make up your own jokes.

Forgive my language

[nysus]

Just who the fuck can we trust these days? What makes these executives think they can act with impunity? Oh, right, they probably can. Yay, free market!

Re:Forgive my language

[jcr]

Yay, free market!

Big pharma does not operate in a free market. They exist in a regulatory framework consisting of thousands of laws and regulations written primarily by their own lobbyists to raise barriers to competition.

The more any industry is regulated, the more it will concentrate into fewer and larger organizations. Big companies can cope with the regulation, but the compliance costs drive smaller competitors out, or push them to be acquired by larger organizations.

If you want to see a free market in medicine, the closest you get to it is Mexico, Thailand, China, or India. There's a reason why medical tourism is a rapidly-growing market.

-jcr

Re:Forgive my language

[palegray.net]

The free market has nothing to do with this. We still have criminal statutes for a reason, although regrettably no executives will go to prison for this.

Re:Forgive my language

[jcr]

Just who the fuck can we trust these days?

Actually, you can trust most of the people you meet. Criminals and fraudsters are still a minority.

My own policy is to trust people until and unless they show me a reason not to, and then I never trust that individual again.

-jcr

Re:Forgive my language

[hazem]

Big pharma does not operate in a free market. They exist in a regulatory framework consisting of thousands of laws and regulations written primarily by their own lobbyists to raise barriers to competition.

So... the pharmas are just shopping in probably the purest free-market, the buying and selling of congressmen, in order to make their own market less free to their advantage?

Sounds like "free market" is not so free and very expensive to all but the richest of us.

Re:Forgive my language

[jcr]

the pharmas are just shopping in probably the purest free-market, the buying and selling of congressmen

Actually, thats a highly regulated market, too. They have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy a congressman without the congressman, the lobbyist and the buyer all landing in jail. Again, it's something that larger companies can afford to do far more easily than smaller ones.

-jcr

Re:Forgive my language

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it that free-marketeers can point to every giant market failure wrapped in paid-for regulatory loopholes, and get away with saying that it is evidence that everything is just not free enough? Why does this specious reasoning go unchallenged?

We just have to believe harder in the power of the invisible fisting!

Re:Forgive my language

[Dasher42]

The more any industry is regulated, the more it will concentrate into fewer and larger organizations. Big companies can cope with the regulation, but the compliance costs drive smaller competitors out, or push them to be acquired by larger organizations.

That's an interesting observation, but I think it's actually the other way around. The more wealth concentrates, the more the elite will lean on the government to issue laws that secure their wealth, and tilt the odds in favor of their acquiring more. There is no non-disruptive way to hold this in check once this happens. You cannot legislate against money's corruption. People can be bought - period. This makes systems of political checks and balances incompletely, because wealth is power, power corrupts, and economic power is most other forms of power spring from.

This is why I am absolutely in favor of redistribution of wealth. I approve of Norway's lack of a sharp division between rich and poor.

Re:Forgive my language

[Scrameustache]

The more any industry is regulated, the more it will concentrate into fewer and larger organizations.

Like Ma Bell, Standard Oil, and the media companies of the late 90s?

Oh wait, no, that was un/deregulated. Huh.

Re:Forgive my language

[machine321]

Just who the fuck can we trust these days?

Why, you can trust Slashdot, of course!

Re:Forgive my language

[Anonymous Coward]

A free market wouldn't solve anything because regulation isn't the problem. Granted, there are alot of ill-conceived rules, but then it's either due to incompetence or corruption, and that is valid for both lawmakers and regulators. The political class is not only in bed with the corporations, they're sometimes even one and the same people. But it's an effect, not the cause. Big corporations will always have enough money and power to game the system irrespective of the laws, and a free market would in no way prevent that from happening. Competition, by definition, will allow some of the competitors in their pursuit of wealth to gain advantage over the others (with or without merit), an advantage which they in turn use to further extend their edge, eventually using it to kill the competition. And that leaves us exactly where we are today.

Re:Forgive my language

[DNS-and-BIND]

I've been inside Chinese hospitals. You know how when you go in a hospital, it has "that hospital smell"? That smell is disenfectant, they're always cleaning inside. Took me a while to realize what wasn't right, but Chinese hospitals don't have that smell. You know why? Because nobody cleans them, they're freaking filthy. Doctors don't even wash their hands between seeing patients. I live in fear that one day I'll have to use Chinese health care. The practice of physicians prescribing unnecessary or even counterfeit medication is a thousand times worse than the USA. Pro tip: next time you use Chinese health care, tell them you'll pay extra if they give you the real medicine. When they say, "are you sure? it's a lot more expensive" assure them that you do indeed want the geniune article and don't mind paying.

Re:Forgive my language

[Anonymous Coward]

A large number of slashdotters have bought into free-market religion, so the divinity of the market is an unquestioned assumption in much of the reasoning that goes on here. If anything bad happens then it can't be because of the market; it must be because of the measures taken to solve the problem.

It's exactly like the people who claim that vaccines are western plots to cause disease.

Re:Forgive my language

[jcr]

And to effect this "redistribution" (actually, what you're talking about is plunder), you would erect a government with the power to take wealth forcibly from some group of people and give it to some other group of people.

Make government that powerful, and watch what happens.

Government is the ultimate monopoly.

-jcr

Re:Forgive my language

[radtea]

People can be bought - period. This makes systems of political checks and balances incompletely, because wealth is power, power corrupts, and economic power is most other forms of power spring from.

This is why I am absolutely in favor of redistribution of wealth.

So to avoid the corrupting effects of power you are in favour of giving some individuals vastly more power than they have now, to forcibly redistribute wealth?

Personally, I'm in favour of legal and tax frameworks whose policy goal is to produce flatter wealth distributions, and in favour of putting a tax-payer-funded floor under the poorest people, but wholesale redistribution necessarily involves some individuals (and it is ALWAYS individuals) having far too much power over other individuals for anyone to be safe.

You are correct that power corrupts. The power to redistribute wealth on a large scale corrupts absolutely.

Re:Forgive my language

[muridae]

If the system is as corrupt as others, telling them you are willing to pay more is just telling them to sell you the counterfeit medicine at a higher price.

Re:Forgive my language

[Dasher42]

Government is also in the business of being accountable. You already have a vote and a voice, while a sufficiently large and diversified corporation will shrug off your loss as a consumer. Things like the FOIA act in the US wouldn't come readily from the private sector, which is concerned with the bottom line. My point is, when you're talking about government and the objective isn't just profitability in the next few quarters, you actually do have a chance at a balanced and ethical society. Not a guarantee, but a chance. This isn't pie in the sky either; look at the Scandinavian countries or the Indian state of Kerala, where government programs assure better baseline health and quality of life. Equal access to the necessities, if not the luxuries, is worth the social work.

Re:Forgive my language

[HiThere]

Not exactly. In certain kinds of areas the free market works pretty well. Basically in areas with a low cost of entry. and transparent results.

If you can't easily tell the result of the purchase, then the free market doesn't work. If it's hard to start a new company, then the free market doesn't work. But a free market works quite well in selling paper clips.

There's another problem, which the free market solves in the areas where it works: Centralized power tends to corrupt the system. Unfortunately, it tends to corrupt all systems, free market or not. The low bar to entry tends to mitigate against centralized power coming into existence.

So it's not exactly "like the people who claim that vaccines are western plots to cause disease".

Note that software is an area where the free market could work, if it could be maintained free. Unfortunately, this is quite difficult given contract law. As a result the GPL is a compromise. It puts a minimal level of restraints on the market in an endeavor to protect the market's freedom. Other's prefer a different set of protections, so we have differing FOSS licenses. And some of them are better for some purposes, while others are better for others. But my general preference is for the GPL (version 3 by preference, or even the AGPL). To me that seems the best trade-off.

OTOH, I don't claim to be a believer in the free market. I'm a believer in decentralization. I view every centralization as a single point of failure waiting to happen.

Re:Forgive my language

[fmoliveira]

they can just make campaign donations before they are elected

Re:Forgive my language

[jcr]

free-market religion,

I'm pretty fucking sick of that particular sneer that you pinkbots toss off. The market isn't something to worship, it's something to use, just as we use language to facilitate cooperation. You sound just like the fucking bible-thumpers who accuse me of "worshipping" Darwin.

-jcr

Re:Forgive my language

[jcr]

It's not that simple. Have a look at the FEC regulations sometime.

-jcr

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[dissy]

Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia, to print and put up a bunch of fliers offering $10,000 for your nut sack, JordanL? And suppose your nut sack is delivered to the mafia, should I be partially liable for your loss?

First, my answer: Yes. At least in this one specific case, yes. Any time not involving genitals however, no.

Next. my opinion: Wow.. just wow

Finally, get off my sac

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[sy5t3m]

The article says that it was published by Elsevier. If they were just a printing company, I'd agree with you, but they are claiming to be more than that.
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/ataglance

As the world's leading publisher of science and health information, Elsevier serves more than 30 million scientists, students, and health and information professionals worldwide.

We are proud to play an essential role in the global science and health communities and to contribute to the advancement of these critical fields. By delivering world-class information and innovative tools to researchers, students, educators and practitioners worldwide, we help them increase their productivity and effectiveness.

And from http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/mission:

That's why Elsevier partners with leading experts to publish the most authoritative and reliable information so scientists and health professionals can make critical decisions that advance scientific discovery and save lives.

At best, they were duped into lending any credibility they have to a sham. At worst, they knew that the thing was fake and went against their mission statement, yet published anyway because the money was too good to pass up.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[AnalPerfume]

Hienie flu? Is that not caused by diet? Just because someone farts a lot does not make them contagious. Mind you, I wouldn't put it past companies like Merck to sell placebo cures for a non-existent problem.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[AnalPerfume]

That would be down to whether or not their lobbyists have been bribing the right people in the right positions, or whether they have the goods on the people making the decisions.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?

Elsevier is a major scientific publisher; articles appearing in their journals are generally considered respectable. The fact that they were willing to publish a "journal" like this one will do a lot of damage to that reputation. Researchers will be less likely to submit high-quality articles to other Elsevier journals, and university libraries will look more closely at the subscription package deals which is where the journal publishers make most of their money.

That's why.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[spun]

This is not as outlandish a scenario as it seems. JordanL scrotum is very valuable on the black market. They use it as an appetite suppressant in Asia. Or so I've been told. I have never hunted JordanLs for sport or profit. Objection! Leading the witness!

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[BrokenHalo]

Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia...

If I were a publisher by the name of Elsevier, I would be very, very careful what journals I accept to publish. Elsevier is a very high profile outfit, publishing most of the reputable journals in my discipline (biotech) and many others. Backing up a shonky outfit like this was ill-considered, and whoever's idea it was deserves to be fired.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Maelwryth]

The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery might not be very happy about this as well. Especially as their slogan is, "Excellence through peer review". :)

POTD

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome. Thanks.

Elsevier

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary should mention that Elsevier published this. That's the shocking part... We already knew about Merck's lack of ethics.

So far for the need for peer-review

[Xarvh]

I am ashamed to be a researcher.
Scientific journals are built on reliability and reputation, if they are willing to squander it for a few extra bucks, the entire peer-review process is dead, and modern scientific advancement with it.

Re:So far for the need for peer-review

[feranick]

You shouldn't be ashamed. Who should be ashamed are the so called professionals that sold their name and reputation. You have the power to select the journal you submit to. They are not all the same. What a few bad apples do cannot be generalized to the majority of high quality, very respectable papers. BTW, I would refrain to call these phony journals peer-reviewed, when they clearly are not.

Misinformation

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you muddying these waters on purpose?

This is the Merck that everyone is thinking of; ie, the manufacturer of Fosamax, Propecia, Singulair, Vioxx and Zocor.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Man On Pink Corner]

Publishers shouldn't censor, they should just publish.

Damn straight.

And on that subject, don't miss the newest issue of Elsevier's Journal of Holistic Electromagnetic Medicine, where my peer-reviewed article "Correlation Between H1N1 Swine Flu Propagation and Near-Field WiFi Radiation from Linux-Based Routers" just came out. I understand it's already garnering favorable attention in Stockholm.

Re:Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine

[Anonymous Coward]

Give the dog a joint?

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[MrMr]

The publisher may be deeper involved than you think; I have been offered 'special issues' of journals with favorable pieces on one of our products in the past. I never figured out if it was just one desperate sales guy or a real company policy.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[MrMr]

Even Elsevier is subject to Sturgeon's second law.

The Case of El Naschie (Elsevier)

[boombaard]

You've missed this story then?
Sadly, the blog that was initially involved in this, and where the 'riddle' was solved, seems to have removed the entire blog post + comments (lawyers?), but the posts can still be found here

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Khyber]

"Because I disagree with a premise, yet not the conclusion, I'm either a troll, shill or moron. Slashdot at its finest. Sounds like a faith based argument to me."

Nah, just your typical 7-digit UID Youth Squad, freshly brainwashed and clueless. You did nothing wrong.

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

They wouldn't dare. Researchers will never turn down a chance to be published in the Lancet, and libraries wouldn't risk falling behind other schools by not stocking them. Clearly, they'll buy them at any price.

This situation is terrible for science.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[bennomatic]

Good post. But... "shonky"? Never heard that word.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[bennomatic]

I dunno. That's sort of a cop out. If you bill yourself as a premier publisher of respectable medical journals, you should take whatever extra effort is required to avoid being subject to Stugeon2.

To my mind, this statement is no more insightful than, "Shit happens." Any company wiling to offload its responsibilities by invoking S2 is on its way out.

But maybe that was Merck's ultimate goal. Maybe they meant to not only create a single bogus journal, but also to undermine the credibility of all journals by bringing down a major publisher.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[bennomatic]

No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?

That's why you have Impact Factor

[jw3]

There are hundreds or thousands of journals with a fairly low standard. Even if they are not industry founded, they make it relatively easy for anyone to publish next to anything. I know of scientific institutions that have their own journals just so that the (lousy) researchers can publish *somewhere* and have a non-zero publication list.
That said, it is also fairly easy to see how good a scientific journal is, especially to someone who reads scientific literature. The system is not perfect, but it is better than nothing, and relies on the number of times that a single article from a journal gets cited. This metrics spawns the "Science Citation Index" (how often did I get cited?) and "Impact Factor" (how often, on the avearage, an article from a given journal gets cited?).
Think Google. This is exactly what the original google algorithm was using: number of times someone found an information useful / reliable as a measure of how relevant / important / interesting this information is. However, IF / SCI is much older than Google or WWW.
Both indices can be misused or manipulated. Furthermore, they differ wildly depending on the area studied (in especially, medical journals have ridicoulously high impact factors) because of the different number of citations per article and article turnover rate. Finally, it can be really hard for a new journal to get a high IF because of preferential attachement -- scientists flock to these journals that already have high impact factors.
Still, they are better than anything else.
j.

Re:That's why you have Impact Factor

[caffeinemessiah]

This is exactly what the original google algorithm was using: number of times someone found an information useful / reliable as a measure of how relevant / important / interesting this information is

Just had to correct a few things. Google's original algorithm is a variant of what is sometimes called an eigenvalue problem. It's not quite the "number of times someone found an information useful" -- rather, it analyzes the linking patterns between webpages in terms of a recursive-sounding definition: "an important page links to other important pages".

In science, there is an ongoing attempt to reform the use of impact factors, which are easily abused. Check out well-formed eigenfactor as an example.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[jonbryce]

That would be like suing HP for selling the Laserjets that were used to print it.

That clearly is going too far, but going after the hosting provider does happen.

you would think he would know better?

[Anonymous Coward]

according to this: http://www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/brookspm.html Peter Brooks is the Executive Dean of Health Sciences at The University of Queensland, scary

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[h4rm0ny]

Haven't you ever seen "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?" Placebos are for beginners. The real experts first make you actually suffer a problem (ostensibly self-induced), then they start selling you the cure.

Elsevier is more to blame than Merck

[Mutatis Mutandis]

It is not particularly outrageous in itself that a drug manufacturer should collect a few papers that report favourable data on its products, bundle them with a few adverts and some marketing materials, and hand them out at conferences and trade shows. This happens all the time and it does little harm because you know who the sponsor is, and of course that you should not expect full objectivity.

The problem is in the disguise: Elsevier, a respectable publisher of scientific journals, apparently has a side business "Excerpta Medica", which states on its website that "Excerpta Medica Helps Pharma Companies Fulfill 2009 Pharma Guidelines with Elsevierâ(TM)s Physician and Patient Educational Content." In other words, Excerpta Medica is a marketing organisation that serves pharmaceutical companies. It seems highly unwise for a large scientific publisher to run a side business of this nature, which screams "conflict of interest" pretty loud.

The moral figleaf is provided by the "2009 Pharma Guidelines", issued by the PhRMA. However, the PhRMA is essentially a lobby organization for the pharmaceutical companies. Being a lobbyist is not necessarily evil, and no doubt self-regulation can be a good thing, but nevertheless this figleaf is a bit too small to cover Elsevier's shame: Essentially Excerpta Medica is vowing to obey the moral standards defined by its own customers!

The selling point, of course, is obvious: Elsevier holds copyrights to a vast amount of scientific publications, both journals and books, so it can churn out impressive compilations on demand. Or, as they put it on their website "we can leverage the resources of the worldâ(TM)s largest medical and scientific publisher."

We can only hope that most of these publications will have been peer-reviewed earlier, but Excerpta's website also makes it clear that "authors take full responsibility for the content of their manuscripts" and the editor of the publication is "an outside expert". In other words, Elsevier lends it good name to promotional materials, but declines responsibility for their content.

Re:Elsevier is more to blame than Merck

[radtea]

Elsevier, a s/respectable/despicable/ publisher of scientific journals,

Fixed that for you.

By their acts you will know them.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[tomhudson]

Haven't you ever seen "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?" Placebos are for beginners. The real experts first make you actually suffer a problem (ostensibly self-induced), then they start selling you the cure.

Like the fich company that, for some reason, their salmon was white instead of pink, so they advertised it as "guaranteed not to turn pink in the can."

A true claim, but still unethical.

Or cigarette manufacturers early claims that smoking would help you lose weight - how much does a lung weigh?

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[tomhudson]

That would be like suing HP for selling the Laserjets that were used to print it.

Nope - the publisher actually gets to see the content before publishing it. What if they put out a magazine full of kiddie porn? Could they claim "we only publish it?" Didn't think so.

You're confusing the publisher with the printer. The publisher is responsible for hiring the editors (you know, the people who are supposed to be reviewing what's published - unless it's slashdot), etc., and will contract with a printing company for the actual print run.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[tomhudson]

No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?

Never happen. Fox would sue them for infringement of their business methods.

But you're right - the publisher hires the editor(s), contracts with printers and distributors, etc.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[maxume]

Isn't that a pretty thin line you are drawing there?

In my experience, "damn fool" doesn't particularly correlate with higher or lower slashdot user numbers.

Elsevier's weekly mag "Elsevier" is also garbage

[s-whs]

Elsevier is also the name of a dutch weekly magazine that was one of the first things they published. It's not a scientific magazine, but it does publish articles on science by one Simone Rozendaal, a well known nutter who doesn't know anything about science nor has any interest in it consedering the bull he writes. I wrote to the publishering giving a list of all the stupendously moronic stuff he wrote, but got no reply. Suprising eh?

Examples:
He printed lies in an article about 'Benno Baksteen', a pilot and serial-liar who promotes the air travel industry. Examples of Baksteen's lies that Rozendaal puts in that article without checking:

• 1. Schiphol spends more money on insulation than the rest of the world together.
• 2. In the Netherlands, people complain more that the rest of the world together.

Both are complete and absolute bullshit and are easily checked, as I did and Rozendaal didn't.

Then he says about Baksteen himself that he is "192.5 cm, tall and accurate."

Accurate? This moron doesn't even know that ones length can vary by 0.5 cm (in the morning you're taller than at night) so he hasn't measured himself at different times in his youth, then found "He, it can differ by 0.5 cm!" as I found. Also note that this is a well known thing that happens with astronouts returning from trips on the Space shuttle who can be a few cm's longer, for a short while.

Another example is his nonsens about global warming being a non-issue. Note that I don't mind people not believing it, but if you don't believe it, you should have good reasons especially as that results in arguments from such people that we don't need to take any action in this area, which, if they are wrong, will be disastrous in the future. I won't dive into this as this message is getting fairly long, but I will finish with this example from long ago about acid rain. He still says that acid rain wasn't a problem (and even that completely different processes were occurring that were unknown at the time) because:

• 1. He didn't see the tree's were in bad health (as if he's an expert on how trees should look!)
• 2. There was no waldsterben (forests dying out) that was predicted. There bloody wasn't because a massive effort was taken to reduce sulphur output in particular! This statement is just as moronic as saying "There was no year2000 problem, because nothing happened". Nothing (or almost nothing) happened indeed in y2000, but very likely because of the massive effort to prevent the problem ans fix all the software, and not because there was no problem in software!

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[Scrameustache]

suggests that we may be dealing with shills.. But I shudder to think that slashdot is such a high-profile news site for drug companies, that they'd bother.

I once had a job offer to be an "online forum participant", you needed to have already established identities in many popular discussion boards and be willing to create more and maintain them with daily participation.

Astroturfing is apparently done now by hiring a company with shills established where you want to have a say, not by specific companies engaging the forums directly.

Author I meant is Simon Rozendaal.

[s-whs]

Sorry about the typos above, etc. If you want to look it up, the writer's name is actually Simon Rozendaal (first name not Simone).

Also note that I gave the example of astronauts being taller when they return, because knowing this there should ring a bell when someone tells you how tall he is with 0.5cm "accuracy" as that will vary (which Rozendaal should know because of that) so even if he didn't measure how tall he was at different times in his youth, this example should give enough information to deduce this also happens when sleeping. But not with "scientific journalist" Simon Rozendaal.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[SkyDude]

Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?

A publisher, at least one in the dead tree business, always served as a gatekeeper. Admitting contributions that enhanced the publication's overall presentation to the consuming readership could be printed, while flamebait and trolls were consigned to the trash bucket.

Unfortunately, that practice does not seem to have carried over to the internet.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Chlorine Trifluoride]

An academic journal publisher is not a place of universal free speech. Would you get medical advice from The /b/ Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine?

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[k.a.f.]

Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?

Because Elsevier and other academic publishers justify the enormous cost of their journals pretty much solely by the pretense that they ascertain the highest possible scientific integrity in their publications, and that no wayward scientist should even think about publishing in more modern channels even when this would be way more efficient for everyone except the publishing houses. Not that this pretense wasn't already punctured before (google "Chaos, Solitons & Fractals" for an example), but collaborating in a pharma astroturf operation is a new low even for them.

Misrepresentation

[aepervius]

Most if not all socialized medicine care DO NOT use civil servant for health care. They use real doctor and nurse that they pay off fater the care has been done. Such doctor have as much incencitive to do their job good as they do in a private health care concept as the US, but with the added benefit that the centralized healthcare allow for bigger cost reduction on the masses. Whereas private health care, unless in the hand in a very few, will only be a set of balkanized private area.

Re:Misrepresentation

[Jedi Alec]

Hey, don't get in the way of his Fox-fueled "Obama is leading us all to Communism" trip!

Don't you know better than to stand in front of a vehicle while the driver is wearing a blindfold?

Go Open Source

[Sattwic]

Just as there is the Proprietary vs OS struggle in Software Engg., there is now a parallel in the field of scientific publishing.

Open Access Journals [http://www.doaj.org/] are all about free scientific information instead of billions charged by these greedy ba$tard$.

An article costs approx 10$ at publishers like elsevier/merck, which can, like, feed a whole family in my country for a full week!

And the most outrageous part is that sometimes that article would be the result from research funded by my taxmoney and my government while elsevier just earns off it for (virtually) nothing!

Die M$, Die Elsevier, Die Die

Jai Ho Open Source!

Elsevier already has bad reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

Elsevier already has a bad reputation in the sciences. Look up the "El Nashie" case. Elsevier publishes a few good journals which university libraries want, but they bundle subscription so to get the good journals you also have to subscribe to a lot of crap. So, Elsevier also produces a lot of crap journals just to get the libraries to pay the subscription costs, which are quite high by industry standards. In the case of El Nashie, it got especially bad, where the editor of the journal published hundreds of crackpot papers in his own journal.

Unfortunately, usually the academic departments at most universities insist on having certain journals, regardless of cost or bundling. Slowly, though, I think Elsevier is losing its reputation, and I know several people who will not contribute or referee for Elsevier.

Australian Wheat Board

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey don't forget us Australians. We can play with the global big boys too. The Australian Wheat Board funded Hussein's war to the tune of $AU 290 million. Of course no charges were ever laid.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[hankwang]

Elsevier is a major scientific publisher; ... and university libraries will look more closely at the subscription package deals which is where the journal publishers make most of their money.

Well, ask any librarian who has to deal with Elsevier Science about their opinion. Elsevier is the Microsoft of the scientific press. Elsevier charges subscribers as much as they can afford, completely unrelated to the costs related to producing the journal. Typically, they will start a new journal, get some reputable professors to participate in the editorial board. If the journal has enough papers that are being cited, Elsevier increases the subscription price, knowing that a university that does research in the particular niche that the journal covers must have a subscription regardless of the price.

A while ago, I did a price comparison of a couple of journals. The (non-profit) American Physical Society publishes the reputable Physical Review journals (A-E and Letters). An institutional subscription (up to 500 people or so) costs about €0,10 per page IIRC. (There are quite a few pages per year, though) Science and Nature, published by for-profit companies, charge significantly more, I think around €0,60 per page. One of the more reputable Elsevier journals, Chemical Physics Letters, costs €2 per page! That means that a journal that has 5000 pages per year sets you back by 10 k per year. And those prices for Elsevier tend to increase every year.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that Elsevier would do something unethical that makes them money. If you're a scientist and considering to publish papers, avoid citing papers published in Elsevier journals and don't publish there yourself.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[digitalderbs]

They're already slipping. I try to avoid Elsevier when I publish my articles. Look at this journal, for instance :

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/623042/description#description

Re:It's not Merck, it's MSD

[Anonymous Coward]

You're one confused german.

The worst part

[ygslash]

The worst part of this is that the quacks will jump on it, and use it as evidence in their attempts to discredit mainstream medicine. Who knows how many people will waste huge amounts of money on hocus-pocus instead of getting the treatment they need as a result of this crime.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[ssintercept]

if physicians would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.

Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?

i think the word being searched for here is ETHICS
from the doctors hippocratic oath to the publisher who profits from the bogus journal. they are all culpable.

maybe the publishers and doctors should have a disclaimer along the lines of-"the following may/may not be true. believe at your own peril."
that wouldn't hurt sales or credibility...

No Concept Of Drugs

[slughead]

"Aspirin is good medicine."

NSAIDS like aspirin kill way more people per year than Vioxx ever could (7,600 yearly).

If aspirin were going through the FDA today, it would never get approved as OTC. It aggravates asthma, inhibits blood clotting, and if you give it to a kid with a fever, there's a chance they can get something called Reye's syndrome--where their brain and liver are attacked. It can cause permanent brain damage! Especially in infants!

People have no concept of how safe or unsafe drugs really are. Just because they're by prescription doesn't mean they're that dangerous, and just because they're over the counter doesn't mean they're safe. The FDA sucks.

As for Merck inventing a shill magazine to sell their products, I don't see any problem with that, so long as they tell the truth.

The slashdot stub says that Merck's robot publication states that Fosamax performs better than alternatives. That's factual information! What's the problem?

Re:No Concept Of Drugs

[HiThere]

Is it factual?

Well, it may be factual that they say it performs better....

When somebody who pretends to have no interest in the outcome sells you advice...and it then turns out that their supposedly impartial advice was actually to do something that would put money in their pocket, can you really trust the advice to not have concealed anything else?

There's always a danger that somebody may make a mistake, but that's not the same as a lie. In this case, however, there's no way of checking whether or not they are lying. All you know (now) is that they're selling you advice to give them money. The ethics seem on a par with snake oil salesmen. (There is a snake native to China whose oil does appear to ease joint inflammation. But that's one particular species of snake, and it's not a US species. So, perhaps, somebody one ran some tests that showed that snake oil eased joint troubles.)

Hoax!

[ygslash]

Now wait a minute. Could this whole thing be a hoax?

There is not a single reference to this "journal" in the entire citeseer database. The query

"Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine" -merck

on Google returns no reference to such a "journal" from before this scandal broke.

This sounds like a fabrication of the quacks! Does anyone have any real evidence that such a fake journal ever existed?

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[rtb61]

Perhaps not in this case. After all it is not just one fake article but a whole journal of fake articles distributed upon a regular basis. So a team of marketing/PR scumbags worked upon the rag on a regular basis, a real act of conspiracy to defraud and mislead the public. The intent is just so far beyond the pale that criminal prosecutions and jail time are well and truly warranted.

Any government that lets this sort of extreme deceit to pass unnoticed is really betraying the trust that the voters placed in them. At which point should some corporations be considered a risk to the general public good and be broken up, Merck is really approaching that point and considering the harm caused by some of their products and their callous intent to maximise their profits by misinforming and deceiving the general public really does warrant a review of their future ability to do business in any form.

Elsevier published crap, they are a crap publisher

[mkcmkc]

They took money to do their fucking job.

Sorry, but in this case this is crap. Do you really think Elsevier would accept your implied description (i.e., We will publish any garbage anyone pays us to, because that's our job.)? I seriously doubt it, because they (and everyone else) knows they have an solemn ethical duty not to do this sort of thing.

This really puts the lie to Elsevier's claim that open access scientific publication is somehow not as good (ugh) as commercial, restricted-access scientific journals.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to self: Do not buy drugs made by Merck.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[Convector]

While you could choose to publish in non-Elsevier journals, you can't realistically avoid citing papers published in those journals. A substantial fraction of the research in my field (Planetary science) are published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters and Icarus, both of which are Elsevier journals. You can't just ignore an entire body of literature, when it's likely to be fundamental background to your own work.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[cusco]

Wild salmon have pink or orange meat because they eat krill and such that have red pigment that gets deposited in their flesh. Farmed salmon or fresh water salmon have white flesh naturally because they don't get krill in their diet. Salmon farmers now feed them red dyes to change their meat to the color that consumers expect.

Film at 11

[Akita24]

ZOMG! Next thing you'll be telling me is that doctors care more about my health that their Porsches, $1M houses and country club memberships! Or that insurace companies exists to help me when the shit hits the fan instead of figuring out ways to take my mony and not provide service! Next thing you know you'l be expecting me to think that an essential service (healthcare) shouldn't be managed in the most financially efficient manner by a bunch of greedy assholes who's only vested interest in the whole thing is making more money. Who would have thought .. *sigh*

Ahem

[IdahoEv]

You are SERIOUSLY overestimating the value of medicine.

Many of the most significant advances in medical science over the past 100 years has to do with a better understanding of nutrition and hygiene.

Oh geez. Yes, our understanding of nutrition and hygiene have added significantly to our lifespan. But overestimating the value of medicine? No, "most sicknesses" are not caused by what we eat. A very few of the classic illnesses - scurvy, for example - were caused by nutrient deficiencies. Most of the rest are caused by infectious migroorganisms or viruses, autoimmune reactions, injury/trauma, genetic abnormality, or aging. Come on, man: the last 150 years have seen the development of:

        Vaccinations - clearly "medicine", they are responsible for saving more lives than anything else in history. Because of them we basically no longer suffer from Diptheria, Measles, Mumps, Pertussis, Polio, Smallpox, and Tetanus. Are you aware of how many people these diseases, in combination, used to kill?

        Antibiotics - Antibiotics have changed hundreds of bacterial diseases from universal death sentences to something generally handled by a single quick trip to the doctor. Among them are a few you might have heard of: Syphilis, Leprosy, Cholera, and the Black Plague. Antibiotics also have reduced the danger of infection from surgery by, oh, 95% or so, making surgery a much more realistic proposition.

        Radiation therapy and chemotherapy - when combined with improved surgery, they have changed cancer from a death sentence to something we can cure over 50% of the time (across all forms of cancer ... there are some we can cure 95% now).

        Diagnostic Imaging - starting with X-rays, and progressing to MRIs and CAT scans, the ability to see inside the body without opening it allows doctors to discover what's going on inside - making the planning of proper intervention (surgical or otherwise) possible, and even more importantly making it more possible to avoid unnecessary or unhelpful intervention.

        Diagnostic Biochemistry - It's pretty cool that now we can actually tell the difference between a virus and a bacterium, for example, and that we can diagnose diabetes, high LDL cholesterol, and a thousand other conditions through simple blood tests.

Nutrition is a great thing. But the rest of medicine has made some pretty damn big contradictions that you are too quick to discount.

Re:Ahem

[jcr]

Very well said. I would add a few things, like joint replacements, angioplasty, lens replacements and keratotomy. Medicine and engineering together save countless lives.

-jcr

Re:Ahem

[colinrichardday]

Nutrition is a great thing. But the rest of medicine has made some pretty damn big contradictions that you are too quick to discount.

Well, call me a slave to Aristotle, but I tend to discounts contradictions, too. Or did you mean contributions?

Re:Ahem

[PCM2]

Antibiotics also have reduced the danger of infection from surgery by, oh, 95% or so, making surgery a much more realistic proposition.

Well ... if you don't count nosocomial MRSA infections, I guess. But I'm just being snarky. Your post is well stated.

Re:Ahem

[HiThere]

Actually vaccinations saved fewer lives than sanitation systems and street cleaning. They're right up there though.

P.S.: I'm combining street cleaning in with sewage systems, but street cleaning probably wouldn't be near the top if considered separately. Sanitation would still be at the very top though. I'm not sure of the split between sanitation and sewer systems. Possibly sewer systems should be at the extreme top.

P.P.S.: A word on the internal combustion engine. Just image street cleaning without the internal combustion engine, and you'll see what an advance that was. Sorry the various public health measures don't separate cleanly, but they have deep interactions.

Re:Ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but I think the GP's point was that those medical interventions are not everyday occurrences. When did you last take an antibiotic? I haven't had any in 2-3 years at least (I honestly can't remember)! My last bacterial infection was a urinary tract infection 2 weeks ago and I didn't need any antibiotics for that one, just cranberry juice.
How often do you take painkillers? I had a migraine coming on yesterday so I had a coffee. I don't abuse caffeine so it was very effective.
Vaccines are awesome and probably complements nutrition and hygeine as the preventive influence keeping us all healthy.
Those other things are also wonderful but a lot less common. My own chronic health problem is eating disorder - yet another one where nobody knows what causes it or how to treat it.

Re:Ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

Pharma shill...

"Vaccinations - clearly "medicine", they are responsible for saving more lives than anything else in history. Because of them we basically no longer suffer from Diptheria, Measles, Mumps, Pertussis, Polio, Smallpox, and Tetanus. Are you aware of how many people these diseases, in combination, used to kill?"

Google 'Dr Hadwen Jenner'...

As for your laughable comments about cancer... oh what a success story 'The War on Cancer' has been - not.

You actually said "CURE" instead of "SURVIVE FOR FIVE YEARS" - idiot...

Arthritis and diet

[Slur]

So precisely what is it we eat that causes arthritis (the most common indication for Vioxx)?

I have no idea, but I'd lay even money on it being either animal-derived or processed food, and not fruits, vegetables, legumes, or whole grain cereals.

Re:Arthritis and diet

[HiThere]

Since arthritis is not species specific, that's a silly bet.

Gibbons get arthritis. Dogs get arthritis. Neanderthals got arthritis. (I don't have detailed knowledge here, but my suspicion is that one could say Vertebrates get arthritis...but it might be limited to land animals, or even mammals, and perhaps only the species that live over a decade.)

Re:Arthritis and diet

[Magada]

A functioning immune system will give you arthritis over time, if you're a mammal. It's one of those design tradeoff things.

Liquidate the company!

[Slur]

Okay, that's just plain treasonous.

If a company authorized by The People to do business for our benefit goes out and instead defrauds The People, then We have every right and reason to revoke their charter and relegate them to oblivion. And we should!

Yeah, it would mean the loss of some jobs and revenue for the various entities in their web, but it will do more good in the long run. First, the talented people working for this shoddy operation would be freed up to pursue their own eithical enterprises, and second, it would set the proper example and scare the shit out of other companies that might be contemplating or engaged in similar kinds of folly.

Honestly, this is an issue where a company didn't care that it might kill us all so long as they profited, and as far as I'm concerned that's no less than treason.

End them. End them now.

Textbooks written by GlaxoSmithKline

[apunahasapeemapetala]

This sort of thing is hardly new. My wife (medical school grad, ER physician) has a whole TEXTBOOK written by GlaxoSmithKline. She wrote a scathing review of that particular segment because of it, but you better believe that if it makes business sense to do this sort of thing it's going to be done.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[F34nor]

I once indicated the Slashdot.org was "being modded into the ground by RNC paid hacks" and was modded a troll. Astro turfing is cheap easy and real.

Ca-ching!

[Brother Seamus]

Astroturfing is apparently done now by hiring a company with shills established where you want to have a say, not by specific companies engaging the forums directly.

No it isn't. Also, be sure to drink your Ovaltine (TM).

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[PCM2]

Just to clarify: Do you mean the publisher has offered to produce a special issue that features a favorable article on your product that has already been written, or do you mean the publisher offers to have one written for you?

Most trade publishers offer some form of reprint service or custom publishing division as a side business. It's only really a problem if they're passing off paid articles as legitimate news or peer-reviewed content, or if the editors have any direct involvement. If they're just repackaging a favorable article that has already been produced/published so that you can use it for your own promotional purposes, I don't see the harm.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[colinrichardday]

And on that subject, don't miss the newest issue of Elsevier's Journal of Holistic Electromagnetic Medicine, where my peer-reviewed article "Correlation Between H1N1 Swine Flu Propagation and Near-Field WiFi Radiation from Linux-Based Routers" just came out. I understand it's already garnering favorable attention in Redmond.

There,fixed it for you.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[retchdog]

So moron it is. Thanks for clearing that up.

As many others have posted, publisher != printing house; especially a science publisher. HTH. HAND.

Number 1 AUS killer

[Anonymous Coward]

Bees.

Anaphylatic shock.

Why? Especially in Australia, known for some of the most deadly animals in the world!

There are so many bees.

Now, how many asprin are sold?

Re:Number 1 AUS killer

[slughead]

>Now, how many asprin are sold?

The only reason Vioxx existed was because aspirin is the absolute king of stomach bleeding--something which Vioxx and Celebrex don't do (theoretically at least).

Stomach bleeding can kill. So can many of the other things aspirin does. Does the relative risk of death compare unfavorably to that of Vioxx (which contributes to stroke and MI)? We don't know.

Why don't we know? Well you can't compare Vioxx users to the general population because they're generally more overweight. Obesity is a huge contributor to joint pain--which is the main thing Vioxx was prescribed for. Obesity is also a major contributor to stroke and MI. However, when it goes to court, every person on Vioxx who has a MI automatically assumes it's because of Vioxx, even though that's impossible, given that the rate of MI is not that different from the overall population (even given the skewed numbers, like I mentioned before).

There's a reason why Merck stated that they would fight every case tooth and nail: it's because the drug is actually fairly safe, and the media hyped it to death because they hate the drug companies.

Do I think Aspirin should be by prescription only? No, I'm just saying: Aspirin IS MORE DANGEROUS than many prescription drugs--we've proven it! We have the numbers! The only reason it's OTC is because it was Grandfathered in.

I mean, if Nexium caused Renal failure and stomach bleeding at the rates Aspirin does, it'd be taken off the market in no time.

I also find it funny I was modded as "troll" for simply stating a company has the right to advertise about its products (as long as they're honest). As far as I'm concerned, if you don't like the way the drug companies do business, you can boycott and buy generic. If you absolutely must have the latest and greatest drugs, then you can kiss the butt of the company that spent millions (billions?) of dollars creating and testing the product for you. Don't think of it in terms of right and wrong, think of it in terms of necessity: There is no other way to get the drugs you need coming out at the frequency you want without profit incentive.

C.f. "phossy jaw"

[zooblethorpe]

We've known about the perils of phosphorous exposure, leading to phossy jaw, or basically the rotting-out of the jawbone, since well before the strikes of the late 1800's in England's match factories. More historical data here.

The idea that Merck is in any way 'surprised' by this turn of events, when their drug is essentially the same substance at work in the body more than a century ago, is well beyond the outer limits of credibility. Never mind the sharp increase in cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw just in the last few years, since the introduction of bisphosphonate drugs -- by Merck.

Corporations generally incentivize behaviours that are sociopathic on an interpersonal scale but deemed favorable by investors -- in a nutshell, maximize profits by any means available. This ethical vacuum is one of the real flaws of capitalism in its current implementation. Merck's actions are therefore not in the least surprising, and stand as a pointed reminder that corporate excesses must be held in check by some other external mechanism that is not subject to conflicts of interest. This is generally identified as government regulation, though we have seen time and again how government interests can be made to align with those of the corporations and in opposition to those of the public that the government is ostensibly supposed to serve and protect.

Food for thought. Ain't nothing new under the sun, as it's all recurring patterns of human behaviour. The devil is in the details.

Cheers,

interesting...

[jdcope]

I wonder what they will find if they investigate some of the "peer reviewed" journals about climate change?

Cost/Benefit

[Nom du Keyboard]

Did they really think that this wouldn't get out in the end?

Did they calculate that they would come out ahead anyway?

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[Hurricane78]

We called it "viral marketing" at Lycos, and it was done like crazy. No marketing without it. Like a business standard method. Go figure...

Re:Ahem, ahem

[AliasMarlowe]

Nutrition is a great thing. But the rest of medicine has made some pretty damn big contradictions that you are too quick to discount.

But the health and longevity benefits from medicine are also dwarfed by those from civil engineering - potable water, plumbing, sewers, sewage treatment.

Re:Elsevier's weekly mag "Elsevier" is also garbag

[Jedi Alec]

Examples:
He printed lies in an article about 'Benno Baksteen', a pilot and serial-liar who promotes the air travel industry. Examples of Baksteen's lies that Rozendaal puts in that article without checking:

Aw come, on. You can't mention Mr. Baksteen on a non-dutch forum without at the very least explaining that his last name is the dutch word for "brick". Yes, those rectangular objects both known for their great qualities in being part of houses and total lack thereof when it comes to aeronautical endeavors.

Great opportunity?

[fugue]

If a journal is known for questionable results, why are grad students not flocking to duplicate the studies? The experiment is already designed, the products are probably in widespread use, and a negative result that contradicts a peer-reviewed positive result--or a valid criticism of a method--is very very publishable. It ought to be trivial to get dozens of quick publications for your CV.

Yes, field studies are expensive. But people do them all the time, and some people do little else.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[segwonk]

I realize this is way off topic...

But it can be a real puzzle to read slashdot at 3 and then try to follow the continuity. So ostensibly this thread is about Slimy Drug Companies, and then here's a post talking about how salmon get their coloring. How did we get here from there?

Not complaining at all, in fact I love it. It's just interesting to me.

- jw

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[jonadab]

If the allegations are true and verifiable, drug regulatory agencies (e.g., the FDA in the US) should fine them so hard as to risk wiping them clean out of existence, just to send a clear signal to everyone who might be watching that schenanighans of this sort will NOT be tolerated. (And if they don't want to pay the fine, their other option would be to no longer sell drugs in the country. They'll come up with the money somehow.) Heck, I would think the other drug companies would be in favor of nipping this in the bud, since they already have *enough* trouble with general mistrust of their products even without junk like this taking place.

They won't do that, though. They'll probably fine them, but it'll be an amount that they can pay and recover from and stay in business.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[rackserverdeals]

Like the fich company that, for some reason, their salmon was white instead of pink, so they advertised it as "guaranteed not to turn pink in the can."

Apparently, it's just an urban legend that nobody can seem to backup.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[John Newman]

What you link to is the real "Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery", which *is* a very reputable, genuinely peer-reviewed, and very old journal for actual orthopedists. Definitely not to be confused with the Merck fake.

Doctors are stupid

[unreadepitaph]

I seriously doubt you could go through 8 years of study reading countless amounts of journals for information and NOT realise that some journals are just crap. I did Psychology and there were several journals that you had to stay clear of because they had crap information with articles that couldn't get published in well accredited journals. At the end of the day yes Merck is a terrible terrible company that should be lynched and maybe have fireants unleased on their testicles but if your doctor is going to use drugs because of peer-reviews in a shitty journal, you should get a new doctor.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[rexertea]

they should better call it M1n1 flu instead of H1N1.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[compro01]

Definitely not to be confused with the Merck fake

I think that was his point. They're only one word apart, and thus easily confusable, and this could be damaging to their reputation.

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[compro01]

I would prefer that some of their patents be revoked rather than fine them. I think it would send a much clearer message and also have useful side effects to the general population.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[drinkypoo]

The trolls are getting smarter, though. They're modding insightful and informative comments as "Funny". The pathetic moderation system continues to plague Slashdot. Now we have Funny comments being modded insightful or informative because the Funny/Troll mod loop will suck away your karma, and we have insightful or informative comments being modded as "Funny" to prevent any karma gain. It's amazing what kind of stupid fucking badness has come out of not giving karma for funny mods.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm torn between modding you a troll or answering (anonymously of course, I don't want to get modded down by DNC paid hacks)

But have you ever considered that you were modded down because those posters actually thought about the stuff they wrote while you could only see the issue through party politics?

Declining quality in the world of research

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

First we have software-generated paper accepted by the IEEE. And then now we have outright fake journals sponsored by corporations. This couldn't be the best time to get into R&D business, no matter what field you are in.

Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu

[Anonymous Coward]

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Foxy lady"

Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct

[hoelk]

the slogan sounds a bit like from some asian foodstuff product

"Publisher" -status and legal liability

[ErkDemon]

A publisher takes words that someone wants to print, and recreates them in a distributable format.

No, that's what a commercial printer or typesetter does.

The publisher of a printed work is the person or company listed in the front of the publication as being the party legally responsible for it.