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Ghostwritten medical articles called fraud It's fraudulent for academics to give their names to medical articles ghostwritten by pharmaceutical industry writers, say two Canadian law professors who call for potential legal sanctions. Studies suggest that industry-driven drug trials and industry-sponsored publications are more likely to downplay a drug's harms and exaggerate a drug's virtues, said Trudo Lemmens, a law professor at the University of Toronto. The integrity of medical research is also harmed by ghostwritten articles, he said. 'False representation of authorship is in our view fraud.'— Trudo Lemmens Ghostwriting is part of marketing that can distort the evidence on a drug, Lemmens said. Industry authors are concealed to insert marketing messages and academic experts are recruited as "guest" authors to lend credibility despite not fulfilling criteria for authorship, such as participating in the design of the study, gathering data, analyzing the results and writing up of the findings. Class actions involving drugs such as Vioxx, hormone replacement therapy and antidepressants suggest guest authors often fail to meet criteria for authorship, according to the policy paper in Tuesday's issue of Public Library of Science's journal PloS Medicine. In the article, Lemmens and his colleague Prof. Simon Stern argue that legal remedies are needed for medical ghostwriting since medical journals, academic institutions and professional disciplinary bodies haven't succeede...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs