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]

First time I've ever been called an Industry Shill, however I don't work for any drug company. If you had clicked the link I provided you would have seen that the studies that give that 2.5% figure are the studies that concluded that hormone therapy had harmful effects and resulted in a 50% reduction in the use of hormone therapy.

heres the link again, it is quite readable.

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

To provide a better sense of the additional risks that come with combination hormone therapy, the study data can be summarized more simply. Compared to a group of 10,000 women taking placebo, 10,000 women taking combination hormone therapy will experience:
-- 7 more heart attacks
-- 8 more strokes
-- 8 more cases of breast cancer
-- 18 more blood clots
-- 6 fewer cases of colorectal cancer
-- 5 fewer hip fractures

Largely the negative effects are an increase in blood clots, which kind of leads on to my next point.

Me and my grandfather have one thing in common we both had coronaries however his was in the 50's and mine was 3 weeks ago. His killed him, I'm recovering pretty well. The difference are the drug treatments and therapies that have been developed. I've now got a stent in my heart, thats an alternative to a bypass, which was first tried in 1977. Hoping for new treatments to be developed false hope? Well its clear that medical science has advanced since my grandfather had his heart attack, I would be dead without the drug that busted that clot that was killing me.

A Coronary is what happens when a clot blocks an artery feeding oxygenated blood to your heart after 20-30 minutes your heart muscle starts to die, after enough damage, heart failure the inability to pump blood occurs.

Smoking increases the load on the heart and narrows arteries, fat and high cholesterol result in a build up of fat lining the arteries and when this breaks off it causes a bleed and a clot. Obviously losing weight will reduce the amount of fat your carrying and reduce the strain on your heart. You can make 'lifestyle' changes
to reduce the risks something which everyone should be doing. The supermarkets are full of junk that is liable to kill us.

Seems that the risks of Hormone Therapy could be mitigated by the same lifestyle changes that I'm having to make after my heart attack. Actually I'd strongly recommend making changes before experiencing the effects of poor diet, lack of exercise and smoking.

The original poster was asking why Wyeth shouldn't be totally nailed for misrepresenting the risks of hormone therapy and while I don't think its right what they did I also don't see a need to bring out the pitchforks and torches either and I'm cynical enough to see that any punishment thats given out is going to be paid for by the people needing the drugs and treatments.

  I'd like to hear a womans point of view regarding hormone therapy and its benefits and dangers. Hormone therapy is quite widespread even now, its certainly in a different league to some of the other notorious drug treatments that have been brought out and then proven to be harmful.