Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6643

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: book

Pearce N.
Adverse reactions, social responses: a tale of two asthma mortality epidemics
New York: Oxford University Press 1996

Abstract:

Beginning in the late 1970s and extending through most of the 1980s New Zealand experienced an epidemic of asthma deaths that was coincident in time to the marketing of a particular drug, fenoterol by Boehringer Ingelheim. Research in New Zealand established a link between fenoterol and the asthma deaths. The company resorted to a variety of tactics to try and stop publication of the article and to try and mitigate the consequences after publication. The company hired consultants to review and criticize the research, it impugned the integrity of the researchers and it lobbied the New Zealand department of health.

Keywords:
*analysis/New Zealand/asthma/Boehringer Ingelheim/reaction to critics/ disinformation/ fenoterol/PROMOTION DISGUISED: DISINFORMATION AND HARASSMENT