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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.'"
Well at least the ones that don't stroke out over the nearly endless possibilities...
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Wyeth may have gotten caught, but don't kid yourself that every major pharma company isn't doing the exact same thing.
Yeah right...
This happens when you trust people who make money when you don't feel well. When will people learn that doctors do not profit from you being healthy? Neither do pharmaceutical companies. Taking medicine in the belief that whoever gave it to you wanted you to feel better is very naive.
It's stuff like this, and many personal experiences, that make me so cynical toward doctors. It's a sad state of things, but there you have it.
Just what we need, drug companies further muddling the waters so not even doctors can tell which treatments are useful or necessary. No wonder we see large movements away from things like vaccinations, which save lives. People are left with too many doubts and questions, fear doesn't lead to good decision making.
Sounds kind of like global warming, where the people screaming most loudly about scientific consensus are also the ones that stand to benefit the most greatly financially.
Or the ones who scream that there isn't are almost always getting the funding for their research from oil companies.
Just look at Al Gore and his carbon trading investments.
What a fucking red herring. What Al Gore and other non-scientists do or don't do have no bearing on the veracity of the research done by the actual climate scientists.
It all screams conflict of interest.
But having your funding come from someone like Exxon isn't?
This isn't consensus.
It's people signing of on biased meta-studies.
No, the people screaming the loudest don't have the most to gain from global warming.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You could say the opposing side has a lot to gain from AGW not being true. After all, the cost of reducing carbon emissions is significant to those who produce the most CO2. The difference between AGW and this nonsense is that *climatologists would have to be wrong [climate models and ice cores etc.] *physicists would have to be wrong [infared absorbsion spectrum of CO2] etc. In short, there would need to be a massive conspiracy of thousands of scientists all in on it.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I wonder if there's a list pharmaceutical company CEOs distribute to their immediate families...
Dear Mom, here's a list of medications made by pfeiser that I wouldn't take, even if my doctor recommended them.
Your loving son, Jeff.
That would be a great read on wikileaks.
It's odd that the anti-climate change crowd will essentially assert that climatologists are part of some even cabal to destroy the economy, and yet essentially are siding with a group of multinational corporations whose vested interest is in keeping everyone vomiting as much CO2 into the atmosphere for as long as possible.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And I can tell you frankly that the medical profession is split in two. There are people who are in it for the human aspect - usually the doctors. Then there's the people who are in it for the money: The pharmaceutical companies.
This is not surprising, coming off another recent study done by (and now we learn that it was paid for) and published in a magazine owned by a subsidiary of Merck.
Just the fact that these companies are allowed to advertise on TV directly to patients is disgusting. But ask your doctor if XYZ is right for you, because you don't need it at all, or there's probably some cheaper similar drug whose patent has expired and costs 1/4 the price, but if you waste your doctor's time enough he'll write the prescription just to get you out of his office with a smile on your face. After all if he says "NO", you might not come back.
Just the fact that an HIV patient will literally die bankrupt, at $1000+ per month for the meds. Unless you're very rich, you won't be able to keep THAT up for very long, and when you run out of money - so sorry, we can recommend a hospice for you.
Pharmaceutical companies scream about billions of dollars in research, yet they can afford all that printed material for doctors, 5 star hotels for doctors for "seminars", pens, calculators, TV air time, etc. Yet some companies still make money with Aspirin - yes the name belongs to Bayer, but anyone can make and sell acetyl-salicylic acid - the patent expired years ago.
No, big pharma loves the protections patent law gives them, and if they can completely distort the market and throw actual science out of the window WHO CARES so long as it increases sales.
That's why we have Cochrane studies, where we DOCTORS look back at what we're doing and seeing if it REALLY IS effective. A new study from my country published by a close friend of mine suggests that having your blood pressure at 140/90mmHg gives NO INCREASED RISK of heart disease or stroke. But studies paid for by big pharma INSIST (and they've convinced the American Heart Association) that your blood pressure has to be UNDER 120/80. In fact, they want TEENAGERS to start taking blood pressure medication. Hey, at $100-200 per patient per month, SO WOULD I. But we know full well where the unethical branch of the medical sciences is...
The above comment is my opinion as a 3rd world physician, since I have to watch people die because they can't afford the few medications that DO work as advertised (and are thus even MORE expensive).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What does a Doctor gain by prescribing you a treatment that isn't needed?
Defensive Medicine (CYA for doctors)
Beyond any direct fines or other remedies, just halve the patent times on all their patents across the board for each infraction. Sixteen years of protection left on Xyliklopper? Now it's eight.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Why fine the company? The science was very probably accurate;
of course they left out that the content glorified the reduction of trivial symptoms and the consideration of potentially fatal side effects were beyond the scope of the paper part. A PR/ghostwriting company can't get published if a respected clinician doesn't sign-on as an author, the real answer is to tell someone like Dr. Gloria Bachmann, she's not going to be published anymore for being a drug company's whore.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Also a Corporate death sentence, forced liquidation with the proceeds going to the government.
Yes, fuck the investors over. You know - those fat cat investors... It's not like my retirement fund is at stake. Oh - wait. Shit. I guess it is.
(I just LOVE poorly thought out "shoot from the hip" solutions.)
It's not "fuck the investors over" - it is "ensure that the pressure is towards behaving ethically". With anything like decent risk management, you shouldn't have more than some low, single digit percentage in this anyway; investors often lose all their investment when a company goes bankrupt.
I'm also somewhat disturbed that you feel that what you should be thinking about after you find you've invested in murdering people is "What's going to happen to my money?"
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.