Yes, medical “practice is informed by biased evidence summarized for us by people who have financial relationships with companies set to profit from alterations to our practice.” Yes indeed, industry-funded ghostwriters write articles promoting industry’s drugs and then place the articles in high-profile research journals where they’re read by unwary practitioners who duly prescribe them. Yes. But here’s one thing I’ll tell you for damn sure: If most of your journal’s advertising budget comes from industry, you’re not exactly going to resist the situation. You’re going to make yourself as comfy as you can in your favorite comfy chair and then you’re going to pour yourself an excellent scotch and then you’re going to accept the situation.
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See, it’s just like this Australian guy with his anti-depressant du jour, Valdoxan, which he’s touting in The Lancet. He has financial links to Servier, Valdoxan’s manufacturer. His paper’s been torn apart by scientists the world over, with one of them noting that “publication of this flawed paper will undoubtedly validate marketing of Valdoxan, and we are curious to see how many paid Valdoxan advertisements will be published in Elsevier journals.”
With anti-depressants as with sausages — You really don’t want to see how they’re made.
February 13th, 2012 at 9:46AM
who watches the watchers?
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/02/american-journal-of-bioethics-redux-is-this-for-real.html
February 13th, 2012 at 5:32PM
haha on Novartis for buying the rights to it for sales in the US and then finding out it didn’t work.
when the whole edifice is corrupted, it cannot support anything, even the businesses which wrought the corruption to begin with