Exposed: Drug companies skew trial data to trick the public

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: drug companies, clinical trials, health news

(NaturalNews) Tampering with drug trials is nothing new for the pharmaceutical industry, but recent reports explain just how far drug companies are willing to go to make an ineffective, unsafe drug look safe and effective. A recent BBC report explains that in many countries, drug companies are not even required to publish all safety study data when submitting to journals, so they typically submit only the ones that appear positive while burying the negative ones.

NaturalNews has covered several reports about drug trial deception, including a report from back in August about how drug companies manipulate their own trial data to manufacture good results (https://www.naturalnews.com/029394_clinical_t...). When study participants get injured or die during a trial, for instance, drug companies will often just remove them from the final trial results so that the results appear favorable.

But sometimes trial results are so negative that not even the best manipulation tactics can cover them up. So drug companies simply pretend they never took place and conduct new ones until they get the desired results.

Published in the British Medical Journal, the new study on how drug companies routinely mislead the public with garbage drug trials mentions the case of GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) antidepressant drug Seroxat. According to the study, GSK hid information about how the drug causes suicidal behavior and made the public believe it was safer than it actually is.

Pfizer's reboxetine drug is also mentioned, with researchers from the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency noting that there is significant unpublished trial data showing that the drug does not even work. When compared to placebo, trial participants experienced equal results, proving the drug to be useless. Add to that the fact that the drug comes with serious side effects, and it becomes clear that the drug is nothing but quackery.

In the U.S., drug companies are supposed to publish all trial data, but it is not a requirement in the U.K. Though many in the U.K. are working to make it a requirement, drug companies will likely continue to manipulate that trial data either way.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11521873