Disclose Money from Drug Companies

I’ve written letters to 10 top medical schools, who all receive federal grants for medical research, asking about the schools’ ghostwriting policies.  It’s part of my ongoing effort to shed light on financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and medical professionals.

The issue here is the ghostwriting chain.  Drug companies are paying third parties to write articles about products they sell.  The third parties then find doctors at prestigious medical schools to sign those articles, which they then work to get published.  The fact that a drug company paid to have an article written, and often pays for the research cited in the article, is covered up by the ghostwriting chain.  When a doctor practicing medicine, maybe even your own physician, reads the article with a high-profile by-line, there’s no transparency about what’s really behind the research and the article.

I’m appealing to the medical schools to help police this problem.  The schools have the highest standards for their students, and they should apply those standards to the use of their professors’ names.

Last July I wrote to eight leading medical journals asking questions about their ghostwriting policies.  Before that, I asked two major drug companies about allegations that they hired a medical writing company to draft articles for journals and then sought out academics to sign on as the primary authors.

I’m interested in transparency.  Academic institutions play an important role in establishing adequate and meaningful disclosure.  Letting the sun shine in and making information public is fundamental to building people’s confidence in medical research and practice.