Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13330

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: news

Burton TM.
Pfizer Is Denied Access to JAMA Files
The Wall Street Journal 2008 Mar 25D7
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120639755641860717.html?mod=rss_Health

Full text:

In a court case pitting Pfizer Inc.‘s corporate interests against a medical journal’s confidential article-review process, a federal magistrate rejected Pfizer’s attempt to gain access to documents of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The issue was disclosed in an editorial published online Monday by JAMA’s editor, Catherine D. DeAngelis, and its counsel, Joseph P. Thornton. The editorial is to be published in JAMA’s April 23/30 print edition, but was posted early because of its broad public interest.

Dr. DeAngelis, in an interview, said she doesn’t know of previous cases in which a medical company sought to subpoena documents related to a medical journal’s peer-review process. In this case, Pfizer has sought files from JAMA, the Archives of Internal Medicine and the New England Journal of Medicine related to its painkilling drugs Bextra, now off the market, and Celebrex, which still is for sale. The decision against Pfizer by U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys in Chicago earlier this month found in favor of JAMA and the Archives of Internal Medicine; the New England Journal of Medicine matter has yet to be decided.

In their editorial, Dr. DeAngelis and Mr. Thornton noted that medical journals maintain confidentiality of medical reviewers’ opinions so these independent doctors can “work in an unrestrained environment….Producing any of these documents, with or without names, would seriously compromise the process and the trusting relationship among the editors, authors and reviewers,” they wrote.

Pfizer said Monday that it is seeking only “those peer-reviewed comments that have been sent from the journal to the authors” and doesn’t seek to interfere in the peer-review process. The company said it would be willing to review these comments “without seeking to obtain the identity of the peer reviewers.”

The decision comes at a time when federal and state courts are having to weigh a parallel issue, that of journalists’ confidential-source relationships when civil litigants and prosecutors contend such details are vital to their legal interests.

Pfizer is a defendant in cases by more than 3,000 plaintiffs alleging Celebrex caused heart attacks and strokes. The drug is the last of the Cox-2 inhibitor painkilling medicines still on the U.S. market. Others in that class, Bextra and Merck & Co.‘s Vioxx, were withdrawn from the market over safety concerns.

Pfizer had filed subpoenas against the medical journals seeking access to, among other things, confidential comments made by outside doctors serving as reviewers of articles submitted for possible publication. In a court filing, the New York drug company had said medical journals’ files “may…contain exonerating data for Celebrex and Bextra which would be relevant for Pfizer’s causation defense.”