Our Daily Meds : Some independent scientists now view the medical literature as propaganda

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Sunday, January 11, 2009 6:45 pm Email this article
"[ Peterson found example after example of science compromised by marketing. ]," Bill Moyers noted on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS when interviewing Melody Petersen, author of a new book called Our Daily Meds: How The Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines And Hooked The Nation On Prescription Drugs.

" It's gone so far, that some independent scientists are starting to view our medical literature as propaganda.

"I've learned there are so many different ways for a study to be designed to get the data that will help you sell your drug.

"If you want to make it look more powerful then an older drug on the market, you give the volunteers in your trial the older drugs at a dose that is too low to really help them, so your drug looks better.

" if you want your drug to look safer than an older drug, you boost the dose up of the older drug in the volunteers so you have more side effects.

"If you have one study that shows it works, and one study showed that it did not, you published the first study over and over again with the help of your advertising agency, and you don't publish the second one." Former New York Times Journalist

Melody former covered the drug industry for the New York Times

Melody, who formerly covered the drug industry for the New York Times, revealed this last Friday night, May 16th, 2008, in an interview with Bill Moyers on his PBS television program Journal.

REFERENCE

Petersen M. Our Daily Meds : How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

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