Doctors prescribe caution over drugmakers' influence
Doctors prescribe caution over drugmakers' influence
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By The Associated Press
Published: September 21, 2008
TRENTON, N.J. — Just about every segment of the medical community is piling on the pharmaceutical industry these days, accusing drugmakers of deceiving the public, manipulating doctors and putting profits before patients.
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"The influence that the pharmaceutical companies, the for-profits, are having on every aspect of medicine … is so blatant now you'd have to be deaf, blind and dumb not to see it,” said Journal of the American Medical Association editor Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, a longtime industry critic. "We have just allowed them to take over, and it's our fault, the whole medical community.”
In an April editorial in her journal, DeAngelis noted two studies indicated past reports about Merck & Co.'s withdrawn pain reliever Vioxx frequently were penned by ghostwriters and that reports on some Vioxx studies minimized the risk of death. Merck has denied the charges.
"Manipulation of studies and publications by the pharmaceutical and medical device industries is either increasing or there has been more exposure of these practices,” she wrote.
She said industry influence includes swaying doctors and medical students to their brands with gifts, funding research at top teaching hospitals but keeping control of the studies and results, failing to disclose study authors' conflicts of interest, even taking over the continuing medical education system for doctors by running courses on new treatments. Critics say such courses are taught by company-paid speakers who often promote expensive new drugs over older, cheaper ones.
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