Until now, American medicine as a profession has turned a blind eye and deaf ear to ghostwritten journal articles that have corrupted the integrity of the medical literature, displacing science-based medicine with corporate propaganda masquerading as science.
Two high ranking FDA officials’ conflicts of interest have led one to resign, the other is under investigation by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services:
At the July 30, 2009 FDA advisory committee hearing, the only formal presentations at the meeting were a summary of the safety and efficacy data by the sponsor.
A system that was established to safeguard human subjects by implementing those ethical principles is, instead, geared toward lending the appearance of legitimacy to ethical expediency and corner-cutting at the expense of safety for the subjects of clinical trials and for consumers who are at increased risk of harm from defective drugs and devices.
History is about to repeat itself: This is a follow up to a July 26, 2009 I nfomail.
Essentially PhRMA won the right to continue bilking the beleaguered American taxpayer–a concession won under the Bush Administration which prohibited Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.
Today’s New York Times reports (below) that "court documents provide a paper trail showing that Wyeth contracted with a medical communications company to outline articles, draft them and then solicit top physicians to sign their names, even though many of the doctors contributed little or no writing."
“I was trained from day one to market the drug illegally…My job was to promote Neurontin and motivate doctors to experiment on patients. After being hired as a medical liaison, I was selling drugs. The uses promoted were from the “snake-oil list” of 13 medical conditions."
A U.S. federal judge has issued an order to unseal thousands of Wyeth Pharmaceutical documents that provide details about the company’s "mammoth" ghostwriting campaign.
In 2006, PREPA was passed due to fear of an avian flu pandemic, in the event the avian
flu virus mutated to enable person-to-person spread. Avian flu then had a 70% death rate.
ACRE’s mission is to persuade physicians that MORE rather than less industry involvement in Continuing Medical Education programs is good for patients–much as industry’s "Harry and Louise" ads were aimed at convincing the public that universal healthcare was BAD for them.
…an aggressive campaign to vaccinate against the swine flu–EVEN BEFORE THE VACCINE’S SAFETY HAS BEEN TESTED, or the safety of the vaccine adjuvants have been tested.
