Dispute Puts a Medical Journal Under Fire

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/business/media/17journal.html?pagewanted=print&position=
January 17, 2005

Dispute Puts a Medical Journal Under Fire

By BARRY MEIER

Last year was an especially bad one for the pharmaceutical industry, which experienced controversies over how drug studies are disclosed and the implosion of the painkiller Vioxx. Now, as a result of the recent publication of an article about the antidepressant Prozac, it appears that the staid, usually methodical world of medical journals could suffer its own black eye.

On New Year's Day, the British medical journal BMJ published a news article suggesting that "missing" documents from a decade-old lawsuit indicated that Eli Lilly & Company, the maker of Prozac, had minimized data about the drug's risks of causing suicidal or violent behavior.

Within days, the article was cited in hundreds of television and newspaper reports. An outraged Washington lawmaker demanded to know if Lilly had hidden the information from the Food and Drug Administration. While company officials refuted the article's assertions, it was still repeatedly cited. And last Thursday, Lilly spent about $800,000 to run full-page advertisements in 15 major publications to dispute the article.

The incident may prove to be a messy one for the BMJ, which is based in London and owned by the British Medical Association, a professional group. Much of the journal, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, is devoted to research reports about medical issues that are reviewed by experts. But the BMJ, like some other medical journals, also has a separate news section that prints articles like the recent one about Prozac. As it turns out, some of the Eli Lilly documents, which the BMJ said it received from an anonymous source, have been circulating for years. And, Lilly officials said, the BMJ and its reporter declined to provide the company with copies of the documents at issue prior to the article's publication.......

[Dr Ron]

1. It's scary that we can't trust the journals

For years's I've ignored the drug company propaganda, immediatley tossing out all the literature they drop off at the office. I always thought that by basing prescribing information on information I read in the journals I'm bypassing the pharmaceutical company propaganda.

It is becoming increasingly clear that much of what is published in the journals is also controlled by the drug companies.

Hopefully exposing these scandles will increase the integrity of the medical journals in the future. I've already heard of some efforts by some journals to decrease the influence of the drug companies.

[HuckleB]

3. First, this came out of a news division, separate from research.

Second, where do you get that "much of what is published in journals is also controlled by the drug companies"? Especially when reading an article that shows a journal's news division to have falsely bashed a drug company?

[Dr Ron]

6. Not limiting to this article

I was actually referring to the entire batch of information coming out to question published information--a subject much on my mind lately as I've repeatedly had to discuss issues like Vioxx with patients. This might not have been the best spot for that rant.

[HuckleB]

2. Wow! The thread based on the original article went for miles and miles.

But this one is silent!?

:shrug:

[Mari333]

4. Contraindications that occur

from Prozac, restlessness, psychotic behaviour, "off the wall" anxiety///these all occur for me if Im issued an SSRI by a physician..I wont take SSRIs because of the how they affect me but everytime I visit a physician I am offered an "SSRI"..and my depression is merely normal, from grief .I have heard that some physicians get kickbacks from handing out samples of SSRIs to patients. My grief counselor told me "a general physician is NOT qualified to hand these out to the general public, and cannot make the proper diagnosis for anyone in a doctor's office to hand out SSRIs!" He is a clinical psychologist, and has seen the effects of mental health issues that occur when people are handed these things so easily , improperly diagnosed by general practicioners who may get kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies for 'hooking' patients.

[HuckleB]

5. Partly true.

I would agree that most GPs do not have the time to diagnose and follow-up with a patient in the way that is needed to properly prescribe SSRIs and other psychotropic medications. And, yes, some probably don't have the knowledge needed, regardless of time, but that doesn't mean that many don't have the knowledge, if they had the time, which they don't. Blah. Blah. Blah.

As for the kickbacks claim, that's an "old wives tale." I know no health care practitioner who gets paid a dime to prescribe any particular medication.