Widespread Ghostwriting of Drug Trials Means "Scientific" Credibility of Pharmaceutical Industry is a Sham

Monday, April 21, 2008 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: ghostwriting, drug trials, drug racket

(NaturalNews) The discovery that drug companies have been ghostwriting scientific studies using in-house writers, then paying (bribing) doctors and high-level academics to pretend they were the author of the article is making shockwaves across conventional medicine. This latest revelation of scientific fraud exposes a massive, widespread system of fraud involving not only the drug companies, but also hundreds of different peer-reviewed, "scientific" medical journals that have published these ghostwritten articles. This scam is the latest embarrassment to conventional medicine; a system built on such a foundation of scientific fraud that the admission of dishonesty no longer surprises anyone. The pharmaceutical industry, it seems, is now supported almost entirely by fraudulent science fabricated by marketing personnel.

Remember, it is these studies -- the very ones now discovered to be ghostwritten by Big Pharma's in-house authors -- that the FDA uses to approve these drugs, unleashing them onto the public where potentially hundreds of millions of doses of the drug may be sold in just the first few years of its approval. But what we're learning now is that the whole system is an elaborate scam. For these studies, there's no real science involved at all.

To back this up, let me explain how this scam works in seven simple steps:

Step 1: A drug company runs an in-house study (using fraudulent study design from the start) to "prove" that their drug is both safe and effective. If the study produces negative results, it is thrown out. If it produces positive results, proceed to step 2.

Step 2: That same drug company uses in-house writers ("ghost writers") to write up the results of the study in a favorable light by discarding any data that doesn't fit the desired outcome. Note that these in-house writers are marketing people, not doctors or scientists, and they are on Big Pharma's payroll!

Step 3: The drug company contacts a noted doctor or academic and offers to pay them a bribe (a "writing fee") to put their name on the paper as if they were the original author. In reality, the paper has already been completely written and the doctor needs to write nothing.

Step 4: The paper is submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals (such as JAMA) for publication. Since the paper appears to have been independently written by an outside scientist or doctor, the journal is far more likely to consider it credible. Thus, it gets more easily published. The drug company reveals nothing about the true origins of the paper.

Step 5: The drug company that sponsored all this forwards the peer-reviewed, published study to the FDA, claiming this is now "scientific fact" that proves their drug is both safe and effective. Since the study was published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, it must be true, right?

Step 6: The FDA, which conducts no drug safety studies of its own, automatically believes the conclusions of the study (since it was published in a credible journal, after all), and therefore approves the drug for sale! From there, the FDA claims its decisions are based on the "gold standard of evidence-based medicine!"

Step 7: Once the drug is approved by the FDA, the drug company then claims the drug has been declared safe and effective by an independent government agency, and therefore the drug must indeed be both safe and effective. In other words, even though the drug company fabricated much of the evidence used by the FDA to make their approval decision, the drug company still claims that the FDA's decision is an independent, science-based approval of their drug! Furthermore, the drug companies are now arguing that FDA approval should immunize them from any lawsuits or claims of harm stemming from their drugs. Amazing, huh?

From here, doctors are medical personnel are taught that the drug is backed by good science and that the FDA has independently reviewed the evidence and approved the drug. Therefore, it's safe to prescribe to patients. What nobody has been told, however, is that the entire process -- from the drug studies to drug approvals -- was fabricated!

Or, put another way, as long as ghostwriting is tolerated in conventional medicine, the pharmaceutical industry has lost all credibility and is now clearly based on science fraud and marketing gimmicks, not genuine evidence. And remember, ghostwriting is not a new issue. It's been going on for decades. The only thing new about this issue is that it has been exposed in once-secret court documents that just happened to come out during a recent Merck trial.

Medical Journals Should Retract All Ghostwritten Articles

NaturalNews is now calling for all peer-reviewed medical journals to determine the true authorship of all scientific articles they've published over the last ten years and retract all ghostwritten articles.

That would be quite a list, likely involving tens of thousands of published studies. The medical journals, of course, won't bother with that process. You know why? Because just like the drug companies, they'd rather sweep their scientific fraud under the rug than admit they've been played by Big Pharma or participated in a massive campaign of scientific fraud that now calls into question the credibility of virtually all medical journals (except for PLoS Medicine, of course, which remains independent and honest).

You see, all the big players were in on this scam: The drug companies, the medical journals, the FDA, the researchers and even the doctors and academics who accepted as much as $25,000 per study to slap their name on a paper already written by Big Pharma's in-house marketing writers. I guess credibility is cheap in conventional medicine. The entire reputation of a doctor can be purchased for as little as $10,000. Similarly, the integrity of the entire industry can be bought with Big Pharma's dollars. There's nothing in modern pharmaceutical medicine that isn't for sale... not even scientific credibility.

The FDA Should Retract its Approval of All Drugs Based on Ghostwritten Studies

Think about this: The evidence used by the FDA to approve drugs is now known to be tainted. If this were a state or federal court, that evidence would be thrown out as being "inadmissible." But at the FDA, there's no such thing as pro-drug evidence that's too tainted to accept as fact. (There are truly zero standards for scientific evidence at the FDA, at least with the top decision makers. They can accept any piece of fraudulent evidence as fact, no matter how "poisoned" the evidence might be.)

Based on what we now know, the FDA needs to retract its approval of numerous drugs that were approved based on ghostwritten papers. In other words, if the FDA's original approval of these drugs was based on scientific fraud, then the FDA needs to rectify the situation and withdraw the approval of those drugs until proper studies can be conducted.

Will the FDA engage in such retractions? Of course not. There's not motivation to do so. The FDA isn't interested in good science or protecting the public. It's only interested in boosting Big Pharma's profits using whatever methods of collusion, corruption and scientific fraud it can get away with.

I say that if the FDA refuses to retract the approvals of drugs based on ghostwritten studies, the FDA has zero remaining credibility and has abandoned anything resembling "evidence-based medicine." In other words, the FDA is a willing partner in this widespread campaign of scientific fraud, and even when the fraud is discovered, the FDA does nothing to attempt to reestablish scientific credibility. Real science, it seems, has zero priority at the FDA.

The Pharmaceutical Racket

So now we have Big Pharma, the FDA and the top medical journals all engaged in a massive conspiracy to deceive the public, to win approval for dangerous drugs, and to prop up the pharmaceutical industry with fabricated evidence on drug safety that was actually written by Big Pharma's in-house marketing writers. This is clearly a grand pharmaceutical racket, operated much like a system of organized crime. Except these criminals, it seems, have not yet been arrested and charged with any crimes. (That day is coming, however...)

Now I ask you this: How stupid are doctors if they still believe in all this fabricated evidence? Because I've met a lot of M.D.s who believe so strongly in the "evidence" behind pharmaceuticals that they'll argue your ears off about the science of pharmaceuticals vs. the "wishful thinking" of nutritional supplements. It makes you wonder just how gullible doctors really are. (In truth, they're incredibly gullible. All it takes is a visit by a young, bubbly drug rep wearing a push-up bra to radically alter the brand-name drug prescribing habits of a typical M.D.)

And how gullible are patients who believe Big Pharma or the FDA? To believe in this system of fraudulent "junk" science and manipulated clinical trials is downright foolish. And yet hundreds of millions of Americans take pharmaceuticals every single day -- drugs that make them no healthier and that, in fact, may harm them or kill them.

Folks, it is time for the United States of America to wake up and realize we've all been conned by Big Pharma. We've been hoodwinked by a band of clever hucksters sporting academic degrees and authoritative-sounding titles. We've been had. Let us now end this foolishness by retracting all published studies based on fraudulent ghostwriting, retracting all FDA-approved drugs based on these fraudulent studies, and prosecuting the top pharmaceutical companies for the widespread fraud they have so cleverly designed and unleashed in pursuit of the almighty dollar. It is time to invoke established federal anti-trust laws and go after these companies, putting them out of business once and for all and thereby saving countless American children, adults and senior citizens from death by dangerous pharmaceuticals.