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source: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=514316
The link between industry, authors and
their results
By Jeremy Laurance
23 April 2004
CANCER DRUGS: Just 5 per cent of studies funded by the pharmaceutical
industry reached unfavourable conclusions about the companies'
drugs
compared with 38 per cent paid for by non-profit organisations.
( Journal
of the American Medical Association , 1999)
CONTRACEPTIVE PILL: Three independent studies of "third generation"
contraceptives - the subject of a safety scare in 1995 - found
they caused
a higher risk of blood clots. Three studies paid for by the drug
industry
did not. ( British Medical Journal 2000)
SMOKING: 106 reviews of whether passive smoking causes harm found 63
per
cent concluded it was harmful and 37 per cent that it was harmless.
The
only factor that could be correlated with the conclusion was
whether or not
the author was affiliated to the tobacco industry.
HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY: An early analysis of data from trials
of HRT,
published in the BMJ in 1997, suggested that HRT might increase
the risk of
cancer and heart deaths. Insults were heaped on the authors and
the BMJ for
publishing such "rubbish". In 2002, the Women's Health Initiative
study
confirmed that HRT doubled the risk of breast cancer and resulted
in
increased heart problems.
HEART DRUGS: The class of anti-arrhythmic drugs including Lidocaine
and
Flecainide introduced in the late 1970s that were given to patients
with
abnormal heart rhythm were estimated to be killing more Americans
every
year by 1990 than died in the Vietnam War.
Early evidence suggesting the drugs were lethal, which might have averted
the catastrophe, was not published.
ARTHRITIS: Drugs are more often tested on a healthy population, in
whom
they cause fewer side-effects, than on the population that receives
them.
Only 2 per cent of patients in trials of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs were aged over 65, even though the drugs are more commonly
used by,
and have a higher incid- ence of side-effects in, the elderly.
DRUG INDUSTRY SPENDING: The American pharmaceutical industry spent
$16bn
(£9bn) on promotion in 2000 and gave out a total of $7.2bn
of free samples.
Seventy-five per cent of trials published in four of the five
major medical
journals ( The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal
of the
American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine ) are
sponsored
by the pharmaceutical industry. In the fifth journal, the BMJ
, it is 30
per cent.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: An analysis of 789 articles from major journals
found that a third of the lead authors had financial interests
in their
research in the form of patents, shares, or payments from the
companies for
being on advisory boards or working as a director. |
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