An interesting letter in the BMJ highlights the incredible level of penetration that the pharmaceutical industry has in the mainstream media. This time they’re encouraging doctors to speak disparagingly about the safety of generic medicines.
The doctor interviewed in the original article is described as a prominent cardiologist, but the reporter fails to mention the numerous financial conflicts of interest that he has, including receiving financial donations from GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of two drugs mentioned in the article. Bad reporting? I’ll leave it to the reader to judge.
The February 2010 issue of Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) [volume 48,
number 2] contains an editorial and three articles. The editorial discusses
concerns arising from the European Commission’s proposals for changing the
arrangements for licensing drugs and monitoring patient safety. The first
article is a review of the management of community-associated MRSA. The
second article discusses the use of ▼Pregabalin for generalised anxiety
disorder. The third article highlights changes to the reporting of HbA1c
levels. A podcast outlining what is in the February issue is also available
via our website www.dtb.bmj.com.
GlaxoSmithKline has announced that it will make the chemical structures of 13 500 compounds with potential antimalarial activity freely available on scientific websites to encourage research into new drugs for malaria.
For full article, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/340/jan25_2/c465.
This study looks at the 50 top medical centres in the US and their policies on ghostwriting. The authors found that only 26% of institutions have policy on ghostwriting.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000230