Healthy Skepticism Library item: 313

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

Laurance J.
The link between industry, authors and their results
Independent.co.uk 2004 Apr 23

Full text:

CANCER DRUGS: Just 5 per cent of studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry reached unfavourable conclusions about the companies’ drugs compared with 38 per cent paid for by non-profit organisations. ( Journal of the American Medical Association , 1999)

CONTRACEPTIVE PILL: Three independent studies of “third generation” contraceptives – the subject of a safety scare in 1995 – found they caused a higher risk of blood clots. Three studies paid for by the drug industry did not. ( British Medical Journal 2000)

SMOKING: 106 reviews of whether passive smoking causes harm found 63 per cent concluded it was harmful and 37 per cent that it was harmless. The only factor that could be correlated with the conclusion was whether or not the author was affiliated to the tobacco industry.

HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY: An early analysis of data from trials of HRT, published in the BMJ in 1997, suggested that HRT might increase the risk of cancer and heart deaths. Insults were heaped on the authors and the BMJ for publishing such “rubbish”. In 2002, the Women’s Health Initiative study confirmed that HRT doubled the risk of breast cancer and resulted in increased heart problems.

HEART DRUGS: The class of anti-arrhythmic drugs including Lidocaine and Flecainide introduced in the late 1970s that were given to patients with abnormal heart rhythm were estimated to be killing more Americans every year by 1990 than died in the Vietnam War.

Early evidence suggesting the drugs were lethal, which might have averted the catastrophe, was not published.

ARTHRITIS: Drugs are more often tested on a healthy population, in whom they cause fewer side-effects, than on the population that receives them. Only 2 per cent of patients in trials of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were aged over 65, even though the drugs are more commonly used by, and have a higher incid- ence of side-effects in, the elderly.

DRUG INDUSTRY SPENDING: The American pharmaceutical industry spent $16bn (£9bn) on promotion in 2000 and gave out a total of $7.2bn of free samples. Seventy-five per cent of trials published in four of the five major medical journals ( The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine ) are sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. In the fifth journal, the BMJ , it is 30 per cent.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: An analysis of 789 articles from major journals found that a third of the lead authors had financial interests in their research in the form of patents, shares, or payments from the companies for being on advisory boards or working as a director.