Research and Drugs How Investigators are Influenced

May 2000 Healing Newsletter

Clinical investigators and the pharmaceutical industry

Heavy metals and chelation therapy

Magnetic treatments

Research and clinical approval of drugs

Research for sale

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Research and Drugs - How Investigators are Influenced

Drug companies that pay for research and clinical tests of new medicines have been suppressing or manipulating the results. The prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal also warned the likelihood
that drug test results will be manipulated or suppressed is even greater when for-profit companies set up specifically to test drugs conduct the trials.

The findings and the drug studies, along with a sharply worded editorial where Dr. Marcia Angell raises the question "Is Academic Medicine For Sale?" appears one week after the Journal's
publisher, the Massachusetts Medical Society, announced it would replace her as editor with a prominent asthma researcher who has strong ties to the drug industry.

This report comes at a time when "academic medical centers are no longer the sole citadels of clinical research and the industry is wielding more power in conducting large-scale drug tests. Six of the 12 investigators interviewed cited cases of articles whose publication was stopped or whose content was altered by the funding company. The companies are not identified.

In one instance, a drug maker delayed publication of a study's results by requesting changes to the manuscript to make the product look better. During the delay, the company secretly wrote a competing article on the same topic, which was favorable to the company's viewpoint.

Another investigator found that a drug he was studying caused adverse reactions. He sent his manuscript to the sponsoring company for review. The company vowed never to fund his work again
and published a competing article with scant mention of the adverse effects.

The New England Journal of Medicine - May 18, 2000 - Vol. 342, No. 20