Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15491

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Publication type: news

Hagan K.
Drug firm disguised link to positive journal article, court told
The Sydney Morning Herald 2009 Apr 23
http://www.smh.com.au/national/drug-firm-disguised-link-to-positive-journal-article-court-told-20090422-afhr.html

Full text:

THE drug company Merck had a cardiologist sign his name to a medical journal article it wrote claiming there was no evidence of any heart risk attached to its drug Vioxx, court documents allegedly show.

In an internal email in August 2001 to discuss a draft of the manuscript, a Merck senior researcher, Briggs Morrison, expressed concern about the claim that Vioxx was not associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events.

“That seems wishful thinking, not a critical interpretation of the data,” Dr Morrison said in an email to colleagues. “The data appears to have been interpreted to support a pre-conceived hypothesis.”

The claim was nonetheless included in the final version of the article, which was sent by Merck to the US cardiologist Dr Marvin Konstam for approval.

Dr Konstam was named as the lead author of the article, published in the medical journal Circulation in October 2001. Five of the authors were Merck employees and the other two, including Dr Konstam, were paid consultants.

The email was tendered to the Federal Court yesterday as part of a class action on behalf of every Australian who had cardiovascular conditions after completing at least one prescription of Vioxx between June 30, 1999 and its worldwide recall in 2004. The class action, which includes more than 1000 people, alleges Merck covered up a higher risk of cardiovascular conditions.

Professor George Jelinek, a medical journal editor with an interest in publication processes, reviewed various Merck documents provided by Slater & Gordon which is running the case against Merck.

The professor said authors of the Konstam article should not have published “such a dogmatic conclusion” that there was no evidence Vioxx increased cardiovascular risk “… in light of the scale of the potential health consequences” other data has suggested.

Mr Jelinek, in a statement tendered to the court, said Dr Morrison was not listed as an author “in spite of the fact that it seems he played a more influential role” in its creation than the named authors.

He said ghost authorship of a journal article by a drug company obscured potential biases, rendering the medical community unable to make an informed decision on its findings.