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Drug Company Disguised Advertising As Science
ananyo writes "A former pharmaceutical company employee has blown the whistle on drug promotion disguised as science. Drug companies occasionally conduct post-marketing studies to collect data on the safety and efficacy of drugs in the real world, after they've been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 'However,' writes the anonymous author in an editorial in the British Medical Journal (subscription required), 'some of the [post-marketing] studies I worked on were not designed to determine the overall risk:benefit balance of the drug in the general population. They were designed to support and disseminate a marketing message.' According to the whistleblower, the results of these studies were often dubious. 'We occasionally resorted to "playing" with the data that had originally failed to show the expected result,' he says. 'This was done by altering the statistical method until any statistical significance was found.' He adds that the company sometimes omitted negative results and played down harmful side effects. Nature says it was unable to work out who the writer was but they likely worked on diabetes and the studies criticized were from the Denmark-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk."
Perhaps if big Pharma was actually honest that would merit a story.
SOP.
Pharmacutical companies, especially in the US, are constantly making dubious claims, and marketing products that, occasionally, provide more suffering in the form of side-effects, than the disease they are designed to treat. It's generally accepted that these companies are genuinely apathetic to the medical issues, and simply do anything they can to maximize profit. Next, you'll be telling me that the firearms industry deliberately pressures governments into military action.
This was done by altering the statistical method until any statistical significance was found
I'm convinced that backing into a conclusion by playing with analysis is the raison d'être of most white collar work in the Western world. Using 'risk' models to rationalize market positions enables arbitrary use of capital by so-called banks. Economic and climate analysis pretty much boil down to teasing out curves that fit the preconceived policies of various statists.
Not surprising that multi-billion dollar drug companies.leverage the same tools. Monkey see monkey do.
I work in drug marketing, (software dev at an ad agency) and all I can say is that my pot dealer is more ethical than a typical multinational drug company.
If it's not illegal, they will do it. If you don't want drug companies to do something, make it illegal. Libertarian nonsense won't fix this problem any more than it helps deal with other problems.
Drug companies have lawyers, and always seek to obey the law (and sometimes fail). They don't care about ethics. They care about the law, and perception. Their purpose is to maximize shareholder value, not do good for the world.
As for me... yes I sold out.. no I don't care. It's a cold world.
So, some international drug companies are lying about science just to make a profit while callously risking millions of people's heath as a consequence? What's that to me?
Do you really expect me get upset about this when Apple's new MacBook Pro is expensive and impossible to repair? It's APPLE, for cryin' out loud.
I think /. needs to get some perspective!
This is what happens in for-profit research. And for that matter, if you need results to get the next grant, then you're effectively doing for-profit research. The whole practice of science, private and public is essentially profit driven. Until we start rewarding scientists for negative results as well as we do positive results, we're going to see a lot of faulty positive data published. This is why most major published results in cancer science can't be replicated, for instance.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They marketed a drug called Victoza before recieving authorization to market it several times, and "making claims and comparisons that were misleading, disguising promotional material and failing to provide information which reflected available evidence".
The whole point of the field of statistics is to keep changing your models until you find one that shows the result you want. Why else do you think there are more than a dozen different normalization tests?
Every week, we'd get news stories based on "studies": coffee is good for you, bananas are good for you, aspirin is good for, etc.
The coffee study was invariably done by retailers or growers of coffee, the same for bananas, aspirin, etc. The problem about medicine and pharmacology (or science in general, for that matter) is that you almost never get a zero-one phenomenon, and correlation does not necessarily equal causation. These ambiguities present a very large 'gray area' for the people doing these studies, unfortunately.
Add to that the fact the groups comissioning the research are going to censor out anything negative about their products, and you get an extremely unreliable information product. Trust me when I say that the husk of what remains of modern traditional journalism has neither the time, the resources, nor the inclination.
The only solution I see to this problem is for users to keep the same jaded cynicism that they should probably have for any media product, or to advocate better government regulation to separate real research from junk science.
I work in drug marketing, (software dev at an ad agency) and all I can say is that my pot dealer is more ethical than a typical multinational drug company.
Well let's take a look at the relationships you propose here. Your drug dealer is a single entity, probably not making a ton of money. I mean, he's making money but he in turn pays it to the supplier and then X middle men back to whoever is growing it. It's probably not as much as a software developer. Even if he is making a lot of money, he depends on you to not rat him out to the cops. So if he starts busting your balls or raising prices and you feel like he's unfair you can just turn him over to the cops and face little or no repercussions. So he will probably be friendly, courteous and -- assuming he doesn't mix business with pleasure -- have his shit together enough to accommodate your emergency needs. He/She is the interface to your whole pot experience and has reason to make sure personally that you are a very happy camper.
... when someone wants to license a patented drug in India and Pfizer wants $200 per dosage and that means that Indian patients can't get the super expensive research compounds, people die. And when an Indian firm just makes a generic version of it, they've basically painted a target on their back for international IP laws. When something does go wrong that they are indeed liable for, you are clumped into a class action lawsuit with no voice ... you have the option to opt out of the class action lawsuit (which I think are opt in by default) but to do so would mean going toe to toe with your personal resources and lawyers against their infinite sums of both. Tell me, what incentive do they have to even give a shit about you? And you, Anonymous Coward, you are doubly F'd in the A because you work for one, so that's just more leverage they hold over your head.
Let's look at a multinational drug company. They have infinite resources, they have infinite lawyers, they will sue you on a whim, they will sue you if voice concern. They are faceless, they never meet you, they actually abuse a broken system to interface with you (HMOs and prescriptions). They operate "within the law" (like you said if it isn't illegal they'll do it) so you have no leverage on them if your relationship goes sour. In fact, if your relationship goes sour your goose is pretty much cooked. Oh, and if you manage to threaten their infinite capital, they have ways of generating more of it. When they fight amongst themselves, people die. That's how powerful they are
And I'm supposed to be surprised that your pot dealer is more ethical and humane than big pharma? He'd have to develop some pretty complicated drugs and then go on a rampage of carnage and bloodshed and looting to come close.
As for me... yes I sold out.. no I don't care. It's a cold world.
Listen, from various points of view, everyone has sold out. You live in a capitalistic society and in your employment respect you cannot hold yourself to higher standards than that unless you're okay with living on the street. And nobody should blame you for putting good food in your mouth and living in the best place you can afford. Capitalism's the name of the game and if you don't play it right, you get screwed over. So just suck it up and embrace it, I have. Might make us hypocrites but it doesn't invalidate our logic.
My work here is dung.