Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1943

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

Winslow R, Zimmerman R.
High Blood Pressure: Doctors Sever Ties With Medical Journal
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 2005 Jul 29
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112259517363299394,00.html

Keywords:
hypertension

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments : This curious development, in which a medical journal parts company with it’s sponsoring society, highlights a growing gap between those doctors who perceive that the medical profession and it’s representative bodies are too close to the pharmaceutical industry and those fail to see a problem. Blood pressure has become one of the hot spots in the internecine medical wars to control the definitions of ‘what is normal’.

Full text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112259517363299394,00.html

High Blood Pressure: Doctors Sever Ties With Medical Journal

By RON WINSLOW and RACHEL ZIMMERMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 29, 2005; Page B1

In a dispute reflecting heightened concerns about the control and
credibility of medical information, the American Society of Hypertension
said it is severing its 16-year relationship with the American Journal of
Hypertension.

But the journal’s editor, John H. Laragh, said he had beaten the society to
the punch by announcing in an editorial being published in the July edition
that it was ending its relationship with the society.

The split caps months of tension between the leaders of the society, a group
of 3,000 researchers and clinicians who specialize in the treatment of high
blood pressure, and Dr. Laragh, a co-founder of the society and the
long-time editor of its journal.

The society says it has been seeking, at the recommendation of its auditor
and legal counsel, to establish a formal agreement with the journal giving
the society editorial oversight and more influence over the journal’s
direction and philosophy.

Dr. Laragh, a researcher at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, has
accused the society’s leaders of being improperly influenced by financial
ties to the pharmaceutical industry and becoming, in essence, marketers for
drug companies, which pay them consulting and speaking fees.

He singled out the continuing-medical-education symposia that societies
often hold in conjunction with their medical meetings. In an email to
society members in May, before the hypertension group’s annual meeting, Dr.
Laragh said the organization’s continuing-medical-education agenda had
become “unacceptably dominated” by members who are “heavily involved in
pharma marketing for personal gain.” He alleged the change occurred since
Thomas D. Giles, a hypertension researcher, became president of the society
in 2004.

Dr. Laragh said the industry was “merely doing its job by hiring favorable
lecturers.” But in the process, he said, it is “inadvertently creating a new
category of ‘academic’ businessmen who gain not only money but name
recognition and prestige.”

In an interview last night, Dr. Laragh said the journal is ending ties with
the society because “we decided we couldn’t live under the environment they
created.”

Dr. Giles denied the charge that the society’s members are improperly
influenced by drug companies. “We have the same sort of fire wall that most
organizations build,” he said, adding that on at least one occasion, a
physician was sanctioned for giving a “commercially biased presentation.” In
that case, he said, the doctor was reprimanded in a letter.

The rift highlights the issue of bias in science and whether researchers are
unduly influenced by drug companies. It also reflects the importance of
medical journals to doctor organizations, which often offer subscriptions to
their members as a means of giving them up-to-date information on treatments
in their fields. In many cases, the journals also provide medical groups
with a source of revenue and prestige. Disagreements between doctors and
medical journals over industry influence are increasingly common, but an
outright split is rare.

Citing “irreconcilable differences,” the hypertension society said its
members no longer will pay for subscriptions to the journal after Oct. 1.
The payments amount to about $210,000 a year and come out of member dues. In
a letter to the journal’s Dr. Laragh, Dr. Giles said the journal “may no
longer identify itself as an official journal of the American Society of
Hypertension or in any other way indicate that is affiliated with the
society.” That identification is in part what prompted the society to seek
greater editorial influence.

Torry Sansone, executive director of the society, said relations between the
two groups had been festering for some time. He said the journal’s
leadership hasn’t welcomed the society’s efforts to establish a formal
agreement giving it some oversight of the journal’s editorial content as
well as its philosophy and direction. In addition, he said, the society
wanted some control over the editor’s compensation and length of stay.
Currently, “the society has no say whatsoever” on those issues, Mr. Sansone
said.

In a letter to members announcing the severing of the relationship, Dr.
Giles, a cardiologist at Louisiana State University, New Orleans, also
questioned whether the journal editor’s compensation — $229,000 in 2003 —
was appropriate, given that the journal is owned by a nonprofit group, the
American Journal of Hypertension Ltd. Much of the journal’s income, Dr.
Giles said, comes from the drug industry in the form of advertising,
reprints and supplements.

The journal’s editorial board has defended Dr. Laragh’s salary as reflecting
his two posts, editor in chief of the journal and chief executive of the
nonprofit parent corporation. The editorial board also cited his “stature as
a leading scholar” and said members of the society, in a survey, had rated
the journal as the No. 1 benefit of membership.

Dr. Giles said the society would seek new “official publications” to
communicate scientific developments to its members. They will have “complete
editorial independence,” he said, but the society will provide “appropriate
editorial oversight” to make sure they serve the society’s mission.

—
Write to Ron Winslow at ron.winslow@wsj.com and Rachel Zimmerman at
rachel.zimmerman@wsj.com

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