Medical Papers By Ghostwriters Pushed Hormone Therapy

krou writes "The New York Times reports on newly released court documents that show how pharmaceutical company Wyeth paid a medical communications firm to use ghost writers in drafting and publishing 26 papers between 1998 and 2005 backing the usage of hormone replacement therapy in women. The articles appeared in 18 journals, such as The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology. The papers 'emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia,' and the apparent 'medical consensus benefited Wyeth ... as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.' The apparent consensus crumbled after a federal study in 2002 'found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke.'"

Comments

Re:Here come the Lawyers

[blackest_k]

There are benefits to hormone therapy for women as well as negative effects.

http://www.center4research.org/wmnshlth/2009/hrt02-2009.html

"It's important to note that only 2.5% of the women in the study experienced health problems. So, while the percentage increase in some diseases was rather large, the risk for most patients remained relatively small. That does not mean these risks are not important however."

The pro's and cons and associated risks and benefits is complicated and research is still on going.
while some women have decided that they do not want to risk hormone therapy others continued in spite of the
greater risks now known to exist.

3 weeks ago I had to choose to have a drug with a 5% chance of giving me a bleed on the brain 20:1 sounds bad doesn't it till you know it was almost certain death if I didn't take it.

While its bad that the real risks were hidden, you do have to remember hormone therapy can increase the quality of life for many women, and suing the drug company just increases the cost of drugs and treatments including those that are unrelated to hormone therapy. Is this practice exceptional? I doubt it.

If you sue this company your just making drugs cost more and could be making the difference between patients living or dieing due to the ability to pay for more expensive treatments.

I don't expect this to be a popular view especially with many Slashdot readers being both young and healthy.
but for older readers, who start the day with their daily meds, perhaps they would be less appreciative of the calls to make their drugs either unavailable or far more expensive.

Theres a good number of people with incurable diseases and cancers hoping and praying that the drug companies find effective treatments before they die. When you look at it that way a 2.5 % chance of some negative effect occurring isn't worth pushing a drug company to bankruptcy or delaying bringing new treatments to market.