ALTERNET: Are you one of Big Pharma's Lab Animals?

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Are You One of Big Pharma's Lab Animals?

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet

Posted on December 7, 2007, Printed on December 11, 2007

Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/70013/

Most people blame Big Pharma and the docs in its pocket for elevating everyday

anxiety to depression, depression to bipolar disease and childhood behavior

problems to major psychiatric diseases.

But there are others to thank for the national pathology of creating and

treating diseases that aren't even there.

There's the 200 U.S. medical education and communication companies (MECCs) who

ghostwrite journal articles for Big Pharma -- " just sign here, Doc; we've

reviewed the data " -- for $20,000 to $40,000 per article.

There's Complete Healthcare Communications (CHC), whose phalanx of 40 medical

writers, editors and librarians has submitted over 500 manuscripts to journals

for clients Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth, Schering-Plough and AstraZeneca,

according to its promotional materials, with an acceptance rate of 80 percent.

And the MECC, which wrote up the Merck-designed and -funded Vioxx trials less

the death data, which ran in ls of Internal Medicine first author of the

Advantage study Lisse recounts to The New York Times.

And, of course there are the medical journals themselves which can make $450,000

off one article reprint as Big Pharma disseminates its messages under their

masthead ( " look, Doc -- it says RIGHT HERE " ) and untold ad page revenues.

In 2006, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) editor in chief Dr.

DeAngelis had to apologize for Big Pharma-tainted articles defending

antidepressants during pregnancy and linking migraine with coronary risks in

women. The docs were getting money from antidepressant and heart medication

manufacturers respectively. But 10 months later, she ran a pro Fosamax -- a

Merck drug -- article about a study " designed jointly by the non-Merck

investigators and Merck employees " and " supported by contracts with Merck and

Co. "

Three Merck authors on the study disclosed they potentially owned Merck " stock

and/or stock options, " and the article's 11 other authors disclosed 40 research

grants, consultancies and other financial relationships with drug companies

including Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Roche, GlaxoKline, Wyeth, Novartis, Procter &

Gamble and Merck.

Last summer the AMA was also criticized for earning $50 million a year selling

the names, office addresses and practice types to data miners and detailers, the

better with which to sell doctors drugs.

Hey, doctors can opt out of the program, says the AMA.

Of course advertising and public relations agencies have also helped the

national thrall to Big Pharma by portraying a bad day as a Prozac deficiency,

unruly children as Ritalin deficiencies, insomnia as an Ambien deficiency and

old age as a hormone deficiency.

Slick PR firm Cohn and Wolfe is credited with vaulting " shyness " to a national

psychiatric problem, the answer for which is Paxil, and creating faux grassroots

patient groups like Freedom From Fear to push their clients' drugs.

And Wyeth's ad agency serenaded the nation with the message in its " The Change

You Deserve " campaign that, if we were not enjoying things the way we used to

do, if we were lacking in what agencies used to call get-up-and-go, it was time

to go on the antidepressant Effexor.

But Mr. and Ms. Plasma TV Screen are not off the hook either.

As long people ask themselves, " I wonder if I have Restless Legs Syndrome?

Excessive Sleepiness? Intermittent Explosive Disorder? " they've taken the bait.

As long as people derive more of a thrill out of dosing and experimenting on

themselves -- in spite of the dangerous side effects and sometimes because of

them -- than having a life in which they define the problems and answers, Big

Pharma has its living room lab animals.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/70013/

FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made

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