Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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"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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"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?
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