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How Drug Companies Deceive Doctors
You have permission to publish this article electronically or in
print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. This
article is courtesy of Health Myths Exposed, Box 31729 Dept.
802, Santa Fe NM 87595-1729. Phone: (505) 310-2454. Contact:
service@healthmyths.net. A courtesy copy of your publication
would be greatly appreciated. Editing is available upon
contacting author.
How Drug Companies Deceive Doctors
By Shane Ellison, M.Sc. Health Myths Exposed © 2005
Following doctor's orders has become synonymous with danger.
Every year, FDA approved drugs kill twice as many people as the
total number of U.S. deaths from the Vietnam War.[1] Death by
medicine flourishes because deceit, not science, governs a
doctor's prescribing habits. As an ex-drug chemist, I witnessed
this first-hand.
This deceit comes in many forms. Medical ghostwriting and
checkbook science are the most prominent.
Doctors rely on peer-reviewed medical journals to learn about
prescription drugs. These journals include the Lancet, British
Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal
of the American Medical Association. It is assumed that these
professional journals offer the hard science behind any given
drug. This assumption is wrong. Medical journals can't be
trusted thanks to medical ghost writing.
Medical ghostwriting is the practice of hiring PhD's to crank
out drug reports that hype benefits and hide negative side
effects. Once complete, drug companies recruit doctor's to put
their name on the report as authors. These reports are then
published in the above mentioned medical journals.[2] The carrot
for this deceitful practice is money and prestige. Ghostwriters
can receive up to $20,000 per report. Doctors receive prestige
from having been published. Ultimately, patients get bad drugs
disguised as good medicine.
As deplorable as medical ghostwriting sounds, it is more common
than you think. The world's most influential medical journal,
the New England Journal of Medicine, has admitted that 50% of
their drug articles are ghostwritten.
The editor of the British Journal of Medicine has acknowledged
that medical ghostwriting has become a serious problem for his
publication: "We are being hoodwinked by the drug companies. The
articles come in with doctors' names on them and we often find
some of them have little or no idea about what they have
written."[3]
Consider the testimony from deputy editor of The Journal of the
American Medical Association: "This [journal articles] is all
about bypassing science. Medicine is becoming a sort of Cloud
Cuckoo Land, where doctors don't know what papers they can trust
in the journals, and the public doesn't want to believe."[4]
Other weapons of mass deception exist - checkbook science. As
defined by Diana Zuckerman, PhD, checkbook science is research
intended not to expand knowledge or to benefit humanity, but
instead to sell drugs. It has stolen the very soul of University
research, scientific method, and the patients who serve as human
subjects.[5]
Drug companies use checkbook science to sponsor their own drug
research via the halls of academia and government institutions.
Money is used to
design their own studies, interpret the
results, and stuff negative data under the drug-rug. The
drug-rug is a behemoth rug. It has to be. A myriad of negative
drug data exists.
Like medical ghostwriting, checkbook science is more common than
you think. A third of academic professors have personal
financial ties to drug makers.[6] Called the "Stealth Merger" by
the LA Times, top scientists at the National Institutes of
Health also collect paychecks and stock options from the drug
industry.[7] This has been going on for over 20 years.[8] Known
as the Bayh-Dole Act, U.S law was amended in 1980 to allow for
these flagrant conflicts of interest.[4]
This calculated deceit is scandalous. Hopefully the line at the
pharmaceutical trough gets shorter as this scandal becomes
public. Though, drug makers have an insurance policy for this -
Direct-to-Consumer advertising. The oft repeated "ask your
doctor" ensures that the herd instinctively embraces drugs,
drugs and more drugs.
Understanding medical ghost writing and checkbook science
explains why medical doctors have been hypnotized into drug
worship - they only see the positive. It also explains why
modern medicine is more deadly and lucrative than war - the
danger has been silenced with the pen and money.
Drug companies do not take responsibility for the wonton
prescription drug deceit. Instead, victims have been made
invisible - dehumanized. They are not recognized as children, or
men with significant contribution to society. Their deaths are
simply shrugged off and attributed to sickness or aging.
Those who profit from prescription drugs should hold some sort
of record for the having the most reckless disregard for human
life. If the deceit continues the prescription drug leviathan
will silently kill more people than Napalm dropped on Vietnamese
villages.
References
[1] Approximately 58,000 American's died in Vietnam. FDA
approved drugs kill 106 - 125,000 people per year when used as
prescribed.
[2] Source: CBC's Marketplace. Aired March 25, 2003. Researcher
Colman Jones.
[3]
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1101680,00.ht
ml
[4] Shannon Brownlee. Doctors Without Borders. Why you can't
trust medical journals anymore. Washington Monthly. April 2003.
[5] Zuckerman, D. Hype in health reporting: "checkbook science"
buys distortion of medical news. International Journal of Health
Services. 2003;33(2).
[6] Bekelman, J.E., Li, Y. and Gross, C. P. Scope and impact of
financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research. Journal
of the American Medical Association. 289: 454-465.
[7] Willman D. Stealth merger: drug companies and government
medical research. Los Angeles Times. 2003 Dec 7;:A1, A32-3.
[8]http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0404.brownlee.h
tml#byline
About the author:
Shane holds a Master's degree in organic chemistry and has first
hand experience in drug design. Specializing in therapeutic
nutrition, he has made it his mission to introduce healthy
lifestyle and nutrition habits to the general public. He is
author of Health Myths Exposed. His books and FREE offers can be
found at www.healthmyths.net.
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