Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16404

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Jack A
Wyeth responds to criticism
The Finanical Times 2009 Aug 30
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74bcece8-9597-11de-90e0-00144feabdc0.html

Full text:

US pharmaceutical group Wyeth has dismissed criticism that it misrepresented the science around its hormone replacement therapies in a series of articles it funded and helped draft for publication in academic medical journals.

Wyeth said objections to the group’s role in preparing academic articles on its drugs, Premarin and Prempro, were “a continuing effort to recycle arguments that have been rejected by judges and juries alike”.

The comments came as PLoS Medicine, a medical journal, released 1,500 documents on its website related to the case and published an editorial condemning “ghost-writing”.

This is the practice by which drug companies hire consultants to draft academic articles favourable to their products and then find academics and doctors willing to be cited as authors to ease their publication.

The revelations are the latest in a series of cases highlighting the undisclosed influence of pharmaceutical groups in articles in medical journals.

Ghost-writing has been criticised by guidelines issued by groups of medical journal editors, medical writers and drug companies, but there is no consistent application of these rules or regular sanctions.

PLoS Medicine said the documents highlighted “one of the most compelling expositions ever seen of the systematic manipulation and abuse of scholarly publishing by the pharmaceutical industry and its commercial partners in their attempt to influence the healthcare decisions of physicians and the public”.

The documents, gathered during a case being brought in the US by women suing Wyeth over claims that they contracted breast cancer after taking the company’s drugs, show how Wyeth played an important but undisclosed role in 26 scientific papers published in 18 journals backing hormone replacement therapy.

But Wyeth said: “The bottom line is that the authors…exercised substantive editorial control over the content of the articles and had the final say, in all respects, over the content – all of which was scientifically accurate.”

Since the case, Wyeth has introduced stricter policies on disclosure of financial support or use of medical writers in academic papers.

Reed Elsevier, the publisher of a number of the academic articles cited in the Wyeth case, said it was investigating the matter.