Merck Created Phony Peer-Review Medical Journal 213
Hugh Pickens writes "Don't believe everything you read on the internet is a good rule to follow, but it turns out that you can't even believe a 'peer reviewed scientific journal' as details emerge that drug manufacturer Merck created a phony, but real sounding, peer-review journal titled the 'Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine' to publish data favorable to its products. 'What's sad is that I'm sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...."' writes Summer Johnson in a post on the website of the American Journal of Bioethics. One Australian rheumatologist named Peter Brooks who served as an 'honorary advisory board' to the journal didn't receive a single paper for peer-review in his entire time on the board, but it didn't bother him because he apparently knew the journal did not receive original submissions of research. All this is probably not too surprising in light of Merck's difficulties with Vioxx, the once $2.5 billion a year drug that was pulled from the market in September 2004, after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in long-term users resulting in payments by Merck of $4.85 billion to settle personal injury claims from former users, but it bears repeating that 'if physicians would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's future! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no. They will get a fine far less than the money they made doing it, which is corp-speak for "please keep doing it." None of the executives will get any time. None of the doctors involved will get a reprimand, heck, this is just an advertisement that they play ball. On to the next corporate gig.
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently the mods had a good night out.. Every single comment so far has been moded "Funny". And I'm pretty sure most of them weren't. A poster further down suggests that we may be dealing with shills.. But I shudder to think that slashdot is such a high-profile news site for drug companies, that they'd bother. So I'm going with drunk/stoned or otherwise giddy mods getting their rocks off.
Hmm.. "2009 A H1N1 flu" (or whatever it is that they've decided to call it) doesn't mess with your brain like that, right? Heh, not to worry -- if they are infected, I'm sure it won't spread.. Who're they gonna infect from their Mom's basement anyway? (bad taste? too soon? ok, I apologize.. carry on)
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:4, Insightful)
the article forgot ...and publishers would not offer their presses, AND MANUFACTURERS DID NOT OFFER THEIR MONEY TO SAID PHYSICIANS AND PUBLISHERS these publications could not exist
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:3, Funny)
My Mom's house doesn't have a basement, you inconsiderate clod! I live in her den!
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:5, Funny)
Your mom's a furry?
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, now where are all the funny funny modding moderators?
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:2)
Haven't you ever seen "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?" Placebos are for beginners. The real experts first make you actually suffer a problem (ostensibly self-induced), then they start selling you the cure.
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:2)
Haven't you ever seen "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?" Placebos are for beginners. The real experts first make you actually suffer a problem (ostensibly self-induced), then they start selling you the cure.
Like the fich company that, for some reason, their salmon was white instead of pink, so they advertised it as "guaranteed not to turn pink in the can."
A true claim, but still unethical.
Or cigarette manufacturers early claims that smoking would help you lose weight - how much does a lung weigh?
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:5, Informative)
suggests that we may be dealing with shills.. But I shudder to think that slashdot is such a high-profile news site for drug companies, that they'd bother.
I once had a job offer to be an "online forum participant", you needed to have already established identities in many popular discussion boards and be willing to create more and maintain them with daily participation.
Astroturfing is apparently done now by hiring a company with shills established where you want to have a say, not by specific companies engaging the forums directly.
Re:I sense a serious hand-slapping in Merck's futu (Score:2)
Perhaps not in this case. After all it is not just one fake article but a whole journal of fake articles distributed upon a regular basis. So a team of marketing/PR scumbags worked upon the rag on a regular basis, a real act of conspiracy to defraud and mislead the public. The intent is just so far beyond the pale that criminal prosecutions and jail time are well and truly warranted.
Any government that lets this sort of extreme deceit to pass unnoticed is really betraying the trust that the voters placed in them. At which point should some corporations be considered a risk to the general public good and be broken up, Merck is really approaching that point and considering the harm caused by some of their products and their callous intent to maximise their profits by misinforming and deceiving the general public really does warrant a review of their future ability to do business in any form.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2)
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
Elsevier is a major scientific publisher; articles appearing in their journals are generally considered respectable. The fact that they were willing to publish a "journal" like this one will do a lot of damage to that reputation. Researchers will be less likely to submit high-quality articles to other Elsevier journals, and university libraries will look more closely at the subscription package deals which is where the journal publishers make most of their money.
That's why.
The Case of El Naschie (Elsevier) (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly, the blog that was initially involved in this, and where the 'riddle' was solved, seems to have removed the entire blog post + comments (lawyers?), but the posts can still be found here [blogspot.com]
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, ask any librarian who has to deal with Elsevier Science about their opinion. Elsevier is the Microsoft of the scientific press. Elsevier charges subscribers as much as they can afford, completely unrelated to the costs related to producing the journal. Typically, they will start a new journal, get some reputable professors to participate in the editorial board. If the journal has enough papers that are being cited, Elsevier increases the subscription price, knowing that a university that does research in the particular niche that the journal covers must have a subscription regardless of the price.
A while ago, I did a price comparison of a couple of journals. The (non-profit) American Physical Society publishes the reputable Physical Review journals (A-E and Letters). An institutional subscription (up to 500 people or so) costs about €0,10 per page IIRC. (There are quite a few pages per year, though) Science and Nature, published by for-profit companies, charge significantly more, I think around €0,60 per page. One of the more reputable Elsevier journals, Chemical Physics Letters, costs €2 per page! That means that a journal that has 5000 pages per year sets you back by 10 k per year. And those prices for Elsevier tend to increase every year.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that Elsevier would do something unethical that makes them money. If you're a scientist and considering to publish papers, avoid citing papers published in Elsevier journals and don't publish there yourself.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/623042/description#description [elsevier.com]
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
A publisher, at least one in the dead tree business, always served as a gatekeeper. Admitting contributions that enhanced the publication's overall presentation to the consuming readership could be printed, while flamebait and trolls were consigned to the trash bucket.
Unfortunately, that practice does not seem to have carried over to the internet.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2)
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
Because Elsevier and other academic publishers justify the enormous cost of their journals pretty much solely by the pretense that they ascertain the highest possible scientific integrity in their publications, and that no wayward scientist should even think about publishing in more modern channels even when this would be way more efficient for everyone except the publishing houses. Not that this pretense wasn't already punctured before (google "Chaos, Solitons & Fractals" for an example), but collaborating in a pharma astroturf operation is a new low even for them.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2)
Why is it the publishers job to censor or police what people publish?
i think the word being searched for here is ETHICS
from the doctors hippocratic oath to the publisher who profits from the bogus journal. they are all culpable.
maybe the publishers and doctors should have a disclaimer along the lines of-"the following may/may not be true. believe at your own peril."
that wouldn't hurt sales or credibility...
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2, Troll)
What happens in your perfectly black and white world if Joomla is used by Al-Qaeda to plot an attack?
They took money to do their fucking job.
Because I disagree with a premise, yet not the conclusion, I'm either a troll, shill or moron. Slashdot at its finest. Sounds like a faith based argument to me.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
People need to be informed of the other kinds of 'jobs' that the companies they do business with perform. It will help them make rational decisions about who they want to do business with. Where they want to get their books published, where they want to get their colon checked, who they want to buy their drugs from, you know, that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, people do not like it to be known that they are in the side business of helping kill random strangers. It tends to put a damper on business. So we have governments and courts. But the word never seems to get out to enough people, and it is just ever so easy to ignore the deaths of random strangers. They are just a statistic connected at one remove to the publisher of a fake journal.
Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia, to print and put up a bunch of fliers offering $10,000 for your nut sack, JordanL? And suppose your nut sack is delivered to the mafia, should I be partially liable for your loss?
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2)
Suppose I am a publisher. Suppose I take a job from the mafia, to print and put up a bunch of fliers offering $10,000 for your nut sack, JordanL? And suppose your nut sack is delivered to the mafia, should I be partially liable for your loss?
First, my answer: Yes. At least in this one specific case, yes. Any time not involving genitals however, no.
Next. my opinion: Wow.. just wow
Finally, get off my sac
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2)
This is not as outlandish a scenario as it seems. JordanL scrotum is very valuable on the black market. They use it as an appetite suppressant in Asia. Or so I've been told. I have never hunted JordanLs for sport or profit. Objection! Leading the witness!
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were a publisher by the name of Elsevier, I would be very, very careful what journals I accept to publish. Elsevier is a very high profile outfit, publishing most of the reputable journals in my discipline (biotech) and many others. Backing up a shonky outfit like this was ill-considered, and whoever's idea it was deserves to be fired.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2)
To my mind, this statement is no more insightful than, "Shit happens." Any company wiling to offload its responsibilities by invoking S2 is on its way out.
But maybe that was Merck's ultimate goal. Maybe they meant to not only create a single bogus journal, but also to undermine the credibility of all journals by bringing down a major publisher.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/ataglance [elsevier.com]
As the world's leading publisher of science and health information, Elsevier serves more than 30 million scientists, students, and health and information professionals worldwide.
We are proud to play an essential role in the global science and health communities and to contribute to the advancement of these critical fields. By delivering world-class information and innovative tools to researchers, students, educators and practitioners worldwide, we help them increase their productivity and effectiveness.
And from http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/mission [elsevier.com]:
That's why Elsevier partners with leading experts to publish the most authoritative and reliable information so scientists and health professionals can make critical decisions that advance scientific discovery and save lives.
At best, they were duped into lending any credibility they have to a sham. At worst, they knew that the thing was fake and went against their mission statement, yet published anyway because the money was too good to pass up.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:2, Insightful)
That would be like suing HP for selling the Laserjets that were used to print it.
That clearly is going too far, but going after the hosting provider does happen.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be like suing HP for selling the Laserjets that were used to print it.
Nope - the publisher actually gets to see the content before publishing it. What if they put out a magazine full of kiddie porn? Could they claim "we only publish it?" Didn't think so.
You're confusing the publisher with the printer. The publisher is responsible for hiring the editors (you know, the people who are supposed to be reviewing what's published - unless it's slashdot), etc., and will contract with a printing company for the actual print run.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:5, Funny)
Publishers shouldn't censor, they should just publish.
Damn straight.
And on that subject, don't miss the newest issue of Elsevier's Journal of Holistic Electromagnetic Medicine, where my peer-reviewed article "Correlation Between H1N1 Swine Flu Propagation and Near-Field WiFi Radiation from Linux-Based Routers" just came out. I understand it's already garnering favorable attention in Stockholm.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:3, Funny)
There,fixed it for you.
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Misleading or Deceptive Conduct (Score:3, Funny)
No, publishers should and do exercise editorial and quality controls over the content that they publish. CNN is a publisher. If I write a news article, should I be able to get it published as news if I pay them enough money?
Never happen. Fox would sue them for infringement of their business methods.
But you're right - the publisher hires the editor(s), contracts with printers and distributors, etc.
Does it ever work? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times? Doesn't the availability of everything on the Internet ensure that someone somewhere, doing just a little research, will call 'bullshit' when a certain journal/reviewer goes overboard in praising just one company?
The problem is that companies never get more than a slap on the wrist for pulling stunts like this - commercial regulatory bodies in most countries are far too easy on them. As a previous poster said, it is usually a token fine and none of the executives ever get jailed. So I guess most companies do a simple calculation along the lines of:
Profit = Initial Sales from Lies - Estimated Fine when Caught - Dip in Sales from Bad Publicity.
It would seem that the "Profit" term still comes out as a big number so there is no real disincentive there unless regulatory bodies clean up their act, or the public starts voting with their dollars in a significant fashion.
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:2)
I've already begun to do this. I look for doctors who prescribe drugs only as a last resort. If they offer me a sample of something to try, I know that I've just become a guinea pig for a drug that the doctor received from a marketing campaign - and he probably didn't read the studies that vetted the drug in the first place.
With regard to Merck, it looks like this:
"Gosh, we pretty much own every G8 legislature, especially the US Congress, we're the largest lobby in the world, with some of the highest profit margins, with plenty of protection from competition, and yet, we still don't have complete control of everything. Let's create a fake journal so our drugs can pass the regulatory rigor. We can all sleep better knowing that we have our own prestigious medical journal to rely upon."
The change I want to see starts with a lifestyle change by me, because the drug companies won't change unless I do. I try to start with me first and see what happens.
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:2)
If one company has best medicine for certain problem, it should be chosen
Sure, it should be chose... to lose its patent protection.
I don't want to think about "What drug companies have shady history?
Well, but you have to think about it, because if the company cheated on the other drug, there's a good chance that the drug that you want to take also doesn't do what the company claims.
Also, I think you're greatly overestimating the differences between drugs. Most drugs that drug companies make are useless: there are either generic equivalents that are just as good, or they are lifestyle drugs--something you could fix with nutrition and exercise.
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:2)
If the company has a known shady history, how can you know for sure that their "best medicine for a certain problem" hasn't been propped up by bad/false studies and publications like this fake Merck one?
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:4, Interesting)
You are SERIOUSLY overestimating the value of medicine.
Many of the most significant advances in medical science over the past 100 years has to do with a better understanding of nutrition and hygiene. The fact is, "we know better" than to each much of the crap we eat which often leads to sicknesses we wouldn't otherwise get. Quite a few medicines suppress or weaken your immune system as well.
Yes, there are times in life when medications are necessary, I won't deny it. But those times are actually quite rare. But you can't build a huge industry on rare. We already know what Merck and companies like them are prepared to do in order to sell more drugs to people, so it wouldn't be stupid to look into your own medicine cabinet to see what you don't actually need.
Aspirin is good medicine. Nothing has completely replaced it. They will sell you a lot of more advanced things, but aspirin is good and it's "inferior." Quite often things are sold as newer or superior when it is actually quite the same as the thing before it but with a new combination of components or manufacturing process and most importantly, "A New Patent!" Be careful about that.
I have found that from the time I have become more aware of what I put into my body, the more healthy I have become. Eating less, eating less junk food, drinking less soda and the like are some pretty obvious ones, and are also the ones quite a few people lack the will-power to cut down on in the first place. But you could easily dig deeper into the rabbit hole -- for example, "high fructose corn syrup" is responsible for a lot of pancreatic disorders in people... a little won't hurt you, but when it's in everything you eat? Adult animals don't naturally drink milk -- it's for babies. So why do humans think they "need" it? We know why, we just don't think to question if it's true.
Prevention is truly the best way to play this game. But from the government on down, no one wants to talk about prevention when they talk about the healthcare system.
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:2, Insightful)
No Concept Of Drugs (Score:2, Troll)
"Aspirin is good medicine."
NSAIDS like aspirin kill way more people per year than Vioxx ever could (7,600 yearly).
If aspirin were going through the FDA today, it would never get approved as OTC. It aggravates asthma, inhibits blood clotting, and if you give it to a kid with a fever, there's a chance they can get something called Reye's syndrome--where their brain and liver are attacked. It can cause permanent brain damage! Especially in infants!
People have no concept of how safe or unsafe drugs really are. Just because they're by prescription doesn't mean they're that dangerous, and just because they're over the counter doesn't mean they're safe. The FDA sucks.
As for Merck inventing a shill magazine to sell their products, I don't see any problem with that, so long as they tell the truth.
The slashdot stub says that Merck's robot publication states that Fosamax performs better than alternatives. That's factual information! What's the problem?
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:3, Interesting)
So precisely what is it we eat that causes arthritis (the most common indication for Vioxx)?
Aspirin is good. But it has negative effects, like promoting ulcers, particularly with long-term use. It also has a dose-response relationship for pain relief which levels off, though the side-effects continue to get worse. And it's a fairly short-acting medication. The COX-2 inhibitors relieve pain better, for longer, with fewer gastrointestinal side effects. They also slightly increase the chance of heart attack, which is why most of them got banned, but IMO that's a foolish trade of quantity of life for quality of life.
Ahem (Score:5, Informative)
Oh geez. Yes, our understanding of nutrition and hygiene have added significantly to our lifespan. But overestimating the value of medicine? No, "most sicknesses" are not caused by what we eat. A very few of the classic illnesses - scurvy, for example - were caused by nutrient deficiencies. Most of the rest are caused by infectious migroorganisms or viruses, autoimmune reactions, injury/trauma, genetic abnormality, or aging. Come on, man: the last 150 years have seen the development of:
Vaccinations - clearly "medicine", they are responsible for saving more lives than anything else in history. Because of them we basically no longer suffer from Diptheria, Measles, Mumps, Pertussis, Polio, Smallpox, and Tetanus. Are you aware of how many people these diseases, in combination, used to kill?
Antibiotics - Antibiotics have changed hundreds of bacterial diseases from universal death sentences to something generally handled by a single quick trip to the doctor. Among them are a few you might have heard of: Syphilis, Leprosy, Cholera, and the Black Plague. Antibiotics also have reduced the danger of infection from surgery by, oh, 95% or so, making surgery a much more realistic proposition.
Radiation therapy and chemotherapy - when combined with improved surgery, they have changed cancer from a death sentence to something we can cure over 50% of the time (across all forms of cancer ... there are some we can cure 95% now).
Diagnostic Imaging - starting with X-rays, and progressing to MRIs and CAT scans, the ability to see inside the body without opening it allows doctors to discover what's going on inside - making the planning of proper intervention (surgical or otherwise) possible, and even more importantly making it more possible to avoid unnecessary or unhelpful intervention.
Diagnostic Biochemistry - It's pretty cool that now we can actually tell the difference between a virus and a bacterium, for example, and that we can diagnose diabetes, high LDL cholesterol, and a thousand other conditions through simple blood tests.
Nutrition is a great thing. But the rest of medicine has made some pretty damn big contradictions that you are too quick to discount.
Re:Does it ever work? (Score:5, Funny)
Has any company ever gotten away with stuff like this in recent times?
Yes, I established an advertisement disguised as a medical journal for my company that hasn't yet been outed as a shill. It's called...
Wait... you clever bastard, you almost had me with that one.
Holy crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm feeling cynical (Score:3, Funny)
Corporations are people like you and I with a right to free speech. Merck is just presenting the scientific facts that are important to them. The so-called scientific method is just a cultural idea, not the final arbiter of 'Truth.' What is truth? Isn't it 'true' that Vioxx may have helped people? Isn't it 'true' that it didn't kill everyone?
The doctors are just looking out for themselves, and if they didn't do it, someone else would. And people's lives? Really now. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. So some people died.
Who is the government to tell people what they can and can't sell? People die all the time, but markets and corporations are eternal. Who is the government to tell people what they can and can't imbibe? Alcohol kills people, cigarettes kill people?
People die all the time, but markets and corporations are eternal. Doesn't that mean they are better than us? Who are we to tell them what to do? Oh sure, they are made up of people, but we're made up of cells. I know I don't care too much when I get a cut and a few skin and red blood cells sacrifice themselves for my well being.
In the end, a few people died so a corporation could grow. Is that so bad?
Re:I'm feeling cynical (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a right to political free speech, but you do not have a right to commercial free speech. You also don't have a right to tell lies.
Re:I'm feeling cynical (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>Corporations are people like you and I with a right to free speech.
The *People* have a right to free speech. The corporation does not. It has no more right to free speech than a rock. If the Merck CEO wants to publish things in his own name (with jail-time if it turns-out his lies led to deaths), that's fine but Merck the soulless entity does not have rights. Only individuals have rights.
Re:I'm feeling cynical (Score:4, Informative)
I really wish you were right. According to the Supreme Court, corporations are people with civil rights like you and I. Immortal people with orders of magnitude more power than an individual. Isn't that special?
Re:Holy crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose it's fitting that you've been modded funny considering that if anyone does actually go to jail for this it won't be anyone actually in charge or ultimately responsible. Rich people [wikipedia.org] don't go to jail. If they do somehow end up in jail, it's not the jail you or I would end up in [wikipedia.org] under similar charges.
The only real way to hurt these assholes is to completely boycott their company and products and tank their company. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they won't land on their feet, but anything else is just wishful thinking.
Re:Holy crap. (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, *all* of the Vioxx users I know are suffering from the forced boycott. See ... Vioxx isn't all that bad. The risk of death was pretty low compared to living in pain all the fucking time. But no, only talk radio mentioned that part. There are literally millions of people suffering now who would be willing to take the chance of death to be able to live again.
I know, the solution is government health care, with absolutely no accountability at all. It fucking near killed me. Trust Obama with the foreign policy -- much better then Bush. Trust "civil servants" with your life? Retarded!
Re:Holy crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what, it's great that some people you know were helped by Vioxx. That's honestly great.
But that in *no* way excuses the fact that, due to the drug company's *blatant lies* about the possible effects that it may have, some other people you DON'T know, may have FRICKING DIED from Vioxx.
But hey, if the people who were baldly deceived by drug companies' LIES and died/suffered as a result were all people YOU DIDN'T KNOW PERSONALLY, then that's totally OK I guess.
The fact the company had to make a whole FAKE JOURNAL up to shove their product says volumes about how much confidence they really had about the product.
Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about Vioxx, but perhaps it's not the only drug out there that can help, or maybe the only one your health insurance company was willing to pay for.
My niece sufferers from junior rheumatoid arthritis, within a year of the symptoms first appearing she was in a wheelchair, eventually she managed to see a specialist who put her on to a new drug treatment and very rapidly she went from being wheelchair bound to being a healthy and normal teenager.
The treatment requires 2 injections a week at a cost of £500 a week, luckily this is in the UK and its paid for by the National Health Service, a system we all pay into from our pay packets. If she had been under the American system would she have this drug or would she still be in constant pain in a wheelchair? It took a year of trials of various different medicines before she was prescribed something effective but she has it now and will continue to have it for as long as its needed.
America is a great country but the health system is a complete disgrace. Hopefully Obama will address this issue.
Misrepresentation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen a lot of seedy stuff in my time, but this might just take the cake with respect to all-time industry lows.
How about drug companies treating thousands of doctors to a free night out in a posh restaurant every week for years, so that they can be informed about the latest products.
Re:Holy crap. (Score:2)
Re:Holy crap. (Score:4, Funny)
Revolting! (Score:2, Interesting)
They should be run out of town for this. Sadly I see nothing major happening to them.
Well now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's to say only the "American people" got fucked over? It's usually the rest of us.
When some greedy corporation in the US gets the urge to over-reach common sense in the name of profit, people die. Hello Halliburton, [agonist.org] Blackwater - sorry, "Xe" [truthnews.us] - Merck, Chevron, [ecoworldly.com] Shell, [globalresearch.ca] Union Carbide, [american.edu] Monsanto [i-sis.org.uk] - This is going on all around you, every day. It's just the kind of business y'all have been trained to tolerate, encourage and sponsor. And let's be frank, the absurd US military budget is largely what it is so that they can keep doing it with impunity. Nice little system.
If a corporation is legally a person, then let them be shut down and incarcerated like the murderers and thieves they are.
Re:Well now... (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, you are aware that Shell is a *Dutch*, company, right? Getting a little blood on your hands for a few extra dollars/pounds/yen/euros/whatever is hardly just an American corporate phenomenon. TotalFinaElf was plenty happy to develop oil fields for Hussein under the utterly corrupt Oil for Food program, while ordinary Iraqis starved. Toshiba illegally sold submarine propeller tech to the Soviet Union. Shall we even get started on Chinese companies and food safety?
Other stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
My father, who is a psychiatrist, was looking over a medical journal one day and showed me an article where some researcher---in a study funded by one of the drug companies, I forget which one---had determined that whatever SSRI the company was peddling was effective against bipolar disorder. This had been a six-week trial.
I didn't understand. My father explained to me that yes, SSRIs tend to be effective as short-term treatment for bipolar disorder, but that over the long term, they actually can make bipolar symptoms worse. So the study was cherry-picked: deceptive, because what is good in the short term can be bad in the long term. Many bipolar people get put on antidepressants, which are counterproductive. And doctors often go along with it, because the drug companies have been intentionally misleading them in publications.
Re:Other stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
So the study was cherry-picked: deceptive, because what is good in the short term can be bad in the long term.
This is why drugs oughtn't be marketed to patients. If an ad says a drug has fared well in a study, Joe Regular will assume it's automatically a good thing. He doesn't know a good study from a bad one, or whether a medical journal is reputable - or even exists. A physician has a far greater probability of distinguishing bullshit from actual facts than a layperson, though it doesn't of course always hold true.
Re:Other stuff (Score:2)
Deceptive ads are illegal, stupidity is still legal. As long as Joe can freely get all the good information he needs, but uses his own money to buy shitty drugs, I'm perfectly fine with that.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Other stuff (Score:2)
Why is Joe allowed to choose his food then ?
So you should be allowed to choose milk laced with melamine? Meat with salmonella? Rancid Starkist tuna [archives.cbc.ca]?
The tainted Star-Kist tuna scandal
Broadcast Date: Sept. 17, 1985
What became known as "Tunagate" erupts after this Fifth Estate report airs on Sept. 17, 1985. The CBC's Eric Malling reveals that Progressive Conservative Fisheries Minister John Fraser had knowingly approved a million cans of rancid Star-Kist tuna for sale. Fraser ignored numerous reports declaring that the tuna with the "powerful smell" was unfit for human consumption. Star-Kist Canada Inc. and New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield were pressuring Fraser in order to protect the 400 jobs at the St. Andrew's, N.B., plant.
Before Tunagate, Star-Kist, the largest employer in New Brunswick's Charlotte County, had enjoyed a 39 per cent market share. But that share collapsed to near zero following the scandal. The company eventually pulled out of Canada and the 400 employees at the St. Andrew's, N.B., plant lost their jobs.
Just when and how much Prime Minister Brian Mulroney knew about the events leading up to Tunagate was never made clear. Mulroney initially said he knew about the decision to sell the tainted tuna but later recanted, saying he only learned about the affair when the CBC's The Fifth Estate story aired. Mulroney was also accused by the Opposition of not telling the whole truth when he told the New York Times he had fired Fraser as soon as he had heard of the affair. In fact, it had taken six days.
Weeks after the Tunagate scandal broke, baseball fans booed Mulroney during the opening game of the American League championship playoffs in Toronto by chanting: "Tuna! Tuna! Tuna!"
Re:Other stuff (Score:2)
I, for one, would love to see prescription drug advertising banned. The US and New Zealand are the only "developed" countries where it's not banned. I don't even understand the point - it's 10 seconds of hokey conversations about what it's for, followed by 20 seconds of "but you really ought to talk to your doctor about it, because it's got these massive side effects." My favorite right now is the Advair commercial which tells you that one of the side effects of this asthma medication is death by asthma! The treatment really is worse than the disease.
That's like saying Lipitor will make your arteries completely clog, or Imitrex will make your head explode.
But what would we watch during commercial breaks?
Re:Other stuff (Score:2)
As a PhD who has spent many evening hours explaining medical journal statistics to my physician brother, I would emphasize that last part. Medical schools in the U.S. train future professionals in the practice of medicine, not research. (I'm not saying one is better than the other.) Once I realized this, I started noticing all sorts of comments from physicians that demonstrated their lack of research training.
It's a real issue with no real solution. Expecting an MD to take more stats and research coursework is really not reasonable. Giving non-medically trained PhDs authority over prescriptions isn't really an option either.
Re:Other stuff (Score:2)
As a medical school student in the U.S., we have probably as many if not more non-physician PhDs that are teaching us about their research topics (called "basic science") that do not have all that much for clinical applications in the first two years of medical school as we do physicians teaching us about highly-relevant clinical topics. There is a VERY strong push to try to get medical school students to go into academic medicine at the very least, if not do an MD-PhD program and become a full-time academic. That kind of thing must be going on nationwide as there is a lot of the research topic information being tested on the first part of the national United States Medical Licensing Exam. It's really not until the third and fourth years of medical school that the research topics take a backseat to clinical material.
Re:Other stuff (Score:2)
Re:Other stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies don't have full freedom in the design of trials. It is, fortunately, a very highly regulated activity.
This trial was probably reviewed by boards of experts and blessed by the regulatory organizations, who approved both the length of the study and the criteria for enrolment. A six-week study may very well produce misleading results, I couldn't comment on that, but it would not be the first time people defined stupid plans with the best of intentions. Typically trials are kept at a minimal length at first to reduce the risk to the volunteers, and then gradually extended in later phases of development.
Fosomax is crazy stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Fosomax is a crazy drug, it stops bone turnover and in some cases has lead to patients having to have their jaw bone removed. That's nasty!
"""
Raisor was told her jaw bone was going to end up in a bucket. "They took some out, took some out, kept taking more out," Raisor said.
They tried to save what they could. They used a metal plate for reinforcement.
It didn't work.
"""
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=4911501&nav=0RZF [wave3.com]
Re:Fosomax is crazy stuff (Score:2)
It's called 'jaw osteonecrosis', generally associated with high-dose bisphosphonates used for cancer treatment.
C.f. "phossy jaw" (Score:3, Insightful)
We've known about the perils of phosphorous exposure, leading to phossy jaw [wikipedia.org], or basically the rotting-out of the jawbone, since well before the strikes of the late 1800's in England's match factories [wikipedia.org]. More historical data here [ancestry.com].
The idea that Merck is in any way 'surprised' by this turn of events, when their drug is essentially the same substance at work in the body more than a century ago, is well beyond the outer limits of credibility. Never mind the sharp increase in cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw [wikipedia.org] just in the last few years, since the introduction of bisphosphonate drugs -- by Merck.
Corporations generally incentivize behaviours that are sociopathic on an interpersonal scale but deemed favorable by investors -- in a nutshell, maximize profits by any means available. This ethical vacuum is one of the real flaws of capitalism in its current implementation. Merck's actions are therefore not in the least surprising, and stand as a pointed reminder that corporate excesses must be held in check by some other external mechanism that is not subject to conflicts of interest. This is generally identified as government regulation, though we have seen time and again how government interests can be made to align with those of the corporations and in opposition to those of the public that the government is ostensibly supposed to serve and protect.
Food for thought. Ain't nothing new under the sun, as it's all recurring patterns of human behaviour. The devil is in the details.
Cheers,
Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine? (Score:5, Funny)
I was skeptical about this this periodical since their "Bestiality" issue, which had the title headline: "Give a dog a bone."
Bones? Joints?
Oh, never mind, make up your own jokes.
Forgive my language (Score:3, Insightful)
Just who the fuck can we trust these days? What makes these executives think they can act with impunity? Oh, right, they probably can. Yay, free market!
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Forgive my language (Score:2)
Big pharma does not operate in a free market. They exist in a regulatory framework consisting of thousands of laws and regulations written primarily by their own lobbyists to raise barriers to competition.
So... the pharmas are just shopping in probably the purest free-market, the buying and selling of congressmen, in order to make their own market less free to their advantage?
Sounds like "free market" is not so free and very expensive to all but the richest of us.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forgive my language (Score:5, Insightful)
The more any industry is regulated, the more it will concentrate into fewer and larger organizations. Big companies can cope with the regulation, but the compliance costs drive smaller competitors out, or push them to be acquired by larger organizations.
That's an interesting observation, but I think it's actually the other way around. The more wealth concentrates, the more the elite will lean on the government to issue laws that secure their wealth, and tilt the odds in favor of their acquiring more. There is no non-disruptive way to hold this in check once this happens. You cannot legislate against money's corruption. People can be bought - period. This makes systems of political checks and balances incompletely, because wealth is power, power corrupts, and economic power is most other forms of power spring from.
This is why I am absolutely in favor of redistribution of wealth. I approve of Norway's lack of a sharp division between rich and poor.
Re:Forgive my language (Score:3, Interesting)
People can be bought - period. This makes systems of political checks and balances incompletely, because wealth is power, power corrupts, and economic power is most other forms of power spring from.
This is why I am absolutely in favor of redistribution of wealth.
So to avoid the corrupting effects of power you are in favour of giving some individuals vastly more power than they have now, to forcibly redistribute wealth?
Personally, I'm in favour of legal and tax frameworks whose policy goal is to produce flatter wealth distributions, and in favour of putting a tax-payer-funded floor under the poorest people, but wholesale redistribution necessarily involves some individuals (and it is ALWAYS individuals) having far too much power over other individuals for anyone to be safe.
You are correct that power corrupts. The power to redistribute wealth on a large scale corrupts absolutely.
Re:Forgive my language (Score:2)
The more any industry is regulated, the more it will concentrate into fewer and larger organizations.
Like Ma Bell, Standard Oil, and the media companies of the late 90s?
Oh wait, no, that was un/deregulated. Huh.
Re:Forgive my language (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Forgive my language (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Elsevier (Score:5, Informative)
So far for the need for peer-review (Score:2, Interesting)
I am ashamed to be a researcher.
Scientific journals are built on reliability and reputation, if they are willing to squander it for a few extra bucks, the entire peer-review process is dead, and modern scientific advancement with it.
Re:So far for the need for peer-review (Score:2)
That's why you have Impact Factor (Score:5, Informative)
That said, it is also fairly easy to see how good a scientific journal is, especially to someone who reads scientific literature. The system is not perfect, but it is better than nothing, and relies on the number of times that a single article from a journal gets cited. This metrics spawns the "Science Citation Index" [wikipedia.org] (how often did I get cited?) and "Impact Factor" [wikipedia.org] (how often, on the avearage, an article from a given journal gets cited?).
Think Google. This is exactly what the original google algorithm was using: number of times someone found an information useful / reliable as a measure of how relevant / important / interesting this information is. However, IF / SCI is much older than Google or WWW.
Both indices can be misused or manipulated. Furthermore, they differ wildly depending on the area studied (in especially, medical journals have ridicoulously high impact factors) because of the different number of citations per article and article turnover rate. Finally, it can be really hard for a new journal to get a high IF because of preferential attachement -- scientists flock to these journals that already have high impact factors.
Still, they are better than anything else.
j.
Re:That's why you have Impact Factor (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly what the original google algorithm was using: number of times someone found an information useful / reliable as a measure of how relevant / important / interesting this information is
Just had to correct a few things. Google's original algorithm is a variant of what is sometimes called an eigenvalue problem [wikipedia.org]. It's not quite the "number of times someone found an information useful" -- rather, it analyzes the linking patterns between webpages in terms of a recursive-sounding definition: "an important page links to other important pages".
In science, there is an ongoing attempt to reform the use of impact factors [wikipedia.org], which are easily abused. Check out well-formed eigenfactor [eigenfactor.org] as an example.
Elsevier is more to blame than Merck (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not particularly outrageous in itself that a drug manufacturer should collect a few papers that report favourable data on its products, bundle them with a few adverts and some marketing materials, and hand them out at conferences and trade shows. This happens all the time and it does little harm because you know who the sponsor is, and of course that you should not expect full objectivity.
The problem is in the disguise: Elsevier, a respectable publisher of scientific journals, apparently has a side business "Excerpta Medica", which states on its website that "Excerpta Medica Helps Pharma Companies Fulfill 2009 Pharma Guidelines with Elsevierâ(TM)s Physician and Patient Educational Content." In other words, Excerpta Medica is a marketing organisation that serves pharmaceutical companies. It seems highly unwise for a large scientific publisher to run a side business of this nature, which screams "conflict of interest" pretty loud.
The moral figleaf is provided by the "2009 Pharma Guidelines", issued by the PhRMA. However, the PhRMA is essentially a lobby organization for the pharmaceutical companies. Being a lobbyist is not necessarily evil, and no doubt self-regulation can be a good thing, but nevertheless this figleaf is a bit too small to cover Elsevier's shame: Essentially Excerpta Medica is vowing to obey the moral standards defined by its own customers!
The selling point, of course, is obvious: Elsevier holds copyrights to a vast amount of scientific publications, both journals and books, so it can churn out impressive compilations on demand. Or, as they put it on their website "we can leverage the resources of the worldâ(TM)s largest medical and scientific publisher."
We can only hope that most of these publications will have been peer-reviewed earlier, but Excerpta's website also makes it clear that "authors take full responsibility for the content of their manuscripts" and the editor of the publication is "an outside expert". In other words, Elsevier lends it good name to promotional materials, but declines responsibility for their content.
Go Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as there is the Proprietary vs OS struggle in Software Engg., there is now a parallel in the field of scientific publishing.
Open Access Journals [http://www.doaj.org/] are all about free scientific information instead of billions charged by these greedy ba$tard$.
An article costs approx 10$ at publishers like elsevier/merck, which can, like, feed a whole family in my country for a full week!
And the most outrageous part is that sometimes that article would be the result from research funded by my taxmoney and my government while elsevier just earns off it for (virtually) nothing!
Die M$, Die Elsevier, Die Die
Jai Ho Open Source!
Liquidate the company! (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, that's just plain treasonous.
If a company authorized by The People to do business for our benefit goes out and instead defrauds The People, then We have every right and reason to revoke their charter and relegate them to oblivion. And we should!
Yeah, it would mean the loss of some jobs and revenue for the various entities in their web, but it will do more good in the long run. First, the talented people working for this shoddy operation would be freed up to pursue their own eithical enterprises, and second, it would set the proper example and scare the shit out of other companies that might be contemplating or engaged in similar kinds of folly.
Honestly, this is an issue where a company didn't care that it might kill us all so long as they profited, and as far as I'm concerned that's no less than treason.
End them. End them now.
Misinformation (Score:3, Informative)
Are you muddying these waters on purpose?
This is the Merck that everyone is thinking of [wikipedia.org]; ie, the manufacturer of Fosamax, Propecia, Singulair, Vioxx and Zocor.
Hoax! (Score:3, Interesting)
There is not a single reference to this "journal" in the entire citeseer database. The query
on Google returns no reference to such a "journal" from before this scandal broke.
This sounds like a fabrication of the quacks! Does anyone have any real evidence that such a fake journal ever existed?