Summary / Extracts

This paper reveals the use of Drug Companies to hire "medical education
and communication companies" to control and publish company funded
research articles in medical journals. "Ghost Management".

It shows that money works to get what you want, among other things.

It has long been argued that it is cheaper and more effective to buy
minor bureaucrats than to buy Senators and Congressmen ..... however it
appears that politicians can be bought for not all that much money these
days.

Nothing earthshaking, just more corruption inspired by corporations in
the name of "Maximizing Shareholder Value", which really isn't
corruption but rather the "manifestation of free market forces".

================ End Summary / Extracts ================

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070926192048.htm

Influence Of Drug Companies On Medical Literature

Science Daily — Drug companies control or shape multiple steps in the
research, analysis, writing, and publication of a large proportion of
the medical literature, and they do so behind the scenes, according to a
policy paper recently published in PLoS Medicine.

The paper's author, Sergio Sismondo (Queen's University, Kingston,
Canada), who is an expert in the philosophy of science, calls this
phenomenon "ghost management."

Such articles are "ghostly" says Dr Sismondo, "because signs of their
actual production are largely invisible--academic authors whose names
appear at the tops of ghost-managed articles give corporate research a
veneer of independence and credibility."

Drug companies hire medical education and communication companies
(MECCs) to help produce and place company-funded articles in medical
journals, says Dr Sismondo.

These articles are "managed," he says, because those MECCs "shape the
eventual message conveyed by the article or by a suite of articles." Dr
Sismondo looks at one specific example--the published medical literature
on the antidepressant drug sertraline.

His analysis suggests that between 18% and 40% of the literature on this
drug published between 1998 and 2000 was ghost managed by a single MECC
acting on behalf of the drug's manufacturer. Ghost managed studies, says
the author, "affect medical opinion, practice and ultimately, patients,"
says Dr. Sismondo. "I suspect that most researchers -- even those
participating in the system -- don't have a good sense of the extent to
which this happens."

Citation: Sismondo S (2007) Ghost management: How much of the medical
literature is shaped behind the scenes by the pharmaceutical industry"
PLoS Med 4(9): e286.