Lisa Simpson
Aug 27,2009
In: Finance

It Pays to Push Therapy by Publishing Papers Written by Ghost-Writers

Recently found court papers show that it pays business interests in the world of medicine to push therapy by publishing papers written by ghost-writers. The latter were generously remunerated by a pharmaceutical company in writing 26 so-called scientific articles supporting the use of a therapy of hormone replacement applicable to women. The revelation indicates the high level of the industry’s influence on medical literature that had not been thought of till now.

The writings were published in various medical magazines from 1998 to 2005. It underlined and under played the risks involved in intake of hormones for protection against ailments like skin ageing, heart problems and even dementia. This supposedly medical support benefited Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company that paid a medical writing firm for drafting of the articles to promote the sale of its drugs named Premarin and Prempro. It helped – the sale soared to about $2 billion in 2001.

But the apparent consensus of the medical fraternity split apart when a massive federal study in 2002 on hormone treatment was stopped after it was discovered that those menopausal women who took some of these hormones were unduly exposed to the risk of breast cancer (invasive), heart problems as well as stroke. Later another study came to the conclusion that it also increased the risk of dementia.

The papers written by the ghosts were in the form of review articles. In these the writer puts weight on a large mass of medical research and then draws a judgment about method of treating a particular illness. The articles were published in as many as 18 medical magazines including some of the famed ones – The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.

The essays did not refer to Wyeth’s part in starting off the work and paying for the same. The publisher of some of these journals, Elsevier, said that it was extremely perturbed about these charges about ghost authors. He assured that investigations would be started.

Lawyers framing legal suits against Wyeth uncovered the plot of ghost authors. Their discoveries were made public following the request made in court by PLoS Medicine. The latter is another medical magazine from the Public Library of Science an also by The New York Times.

Wyeth’s representatives said that the essays were scientifically correct. It also stated that there was nothing new about pharmaceutical firms hiring medical communications firms to help the authors in drafting their manuscripts.

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