GHOSTWRITING: Closer ties emerge in HRT scandal

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http://www.thestar.com/living/article/686501

GHOSTWRITING

TheStar.com | News & Features | Closer ties emerge in HRT scandal

Closer ties emerge in HRT scandalSTUART LAIDLAW/TORONTO STAR

Canadian researcher denies second article was ghostwritten

Aug 26, 2009 04:30 AM

Stuart Laidlaw

Faith and Ethics Reporter

The

relationship between a top Canadian researcher of hormone replacement

therapy and a New Jersey ghostwriting firm with ties to the

pharmaceutical industry is closer than first believed.Court documents obtained by the Toronto Star indicate

that McGill University psychology professor Barbara Sherwin, who has

said her work with DesignWrite to produce an April 2000 estrogen study

was a one-time mistake, used the services of the firm on another

occasion.In a statement yesterday, Sherwin said the resulting work "was entirely my own."Internal

DesignWrite documents indicate that within months of the April 2000

article being published, Sherwin was once again working with the

medical writing firm, under contract with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals at the

time to ghostwrite articles promoting its estrogen therapy drugs.In

fact, a Wyeth marketing executive appears to have contacted Sherwin

about the article "Estrogen and Cognitive Functioning in Women," which

appeared in the April 2003 edition of Endocrine Reviews.Sherwin

is the first Canadian to be implicated in a growing ghostwriting

scandal in the United States, where internal DesignWrite documents used

in an Arkansas lawsuit were made public after legal action last month

by The New York Times and the journal PLoS Medicine.In response to revelations by the Star

that she had used a Wyeth-paid ghostwriter to prepare the April 2000

study that said estrogen was a "relatively safe" treatment for memory

loss in middle aged women, Sherwin said it was a one-time mistake. "It is an error I regret and which had never occurred before or since," she said.In a statement yesterday, Sherwin said she did not use any of DesignWrite's contributions in the final April 2003 paper."I had refused to submit material offered by DesignWrite personnel. The article eventually published in Endocrine Reviews was entirely my own work. I cannot emphasize that strongly enough," she said.Internal

DesignWrite documents identify the article as MS #19, or Manuscript

#19, and classify it as part of the firm's central nervous system

series of articles for Wyeth. One document, a report tracking

the progress of Wyeth-related articles, includes the notation, "Invited

paper – author requested editorial support." Invited papers are those assigned by an academic journal. At

a July 27, 2000 meeting of DesignWrite senior writer Mittleman

and three Wyeth marketing executives, Durocher of Wyeth agreed to

ask Sherwin whether she would work with DesignWrite on the paper. "Priorities

were readjusted: 1) Barbara Sherwin will be contacted by

regarding her review paper on estrogens and cognition," minutes from

the meeting read. "If she is interested in working with DW (DesignWrite), then this will become MS #19 in place of the counselling issues paper."Minutes

for the next meeting on Aug. 17, 2000, begin with the note, "DW is

working on B. Sherwin's review paper on Estrogens and Cognition (MS

#19)." An internal tracking report from the day before includes the note, "Author will send outline and directions to DW."Later

documents monitor the progress of the article, which said estrogen

could reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease in post-menopausal women,

through numerous review and editing phases, with the targeted

publication date being pushed back to the spring of 2003.Once

the article was published, it was cited in 27 other studies into

estrogen use, including one by Sherwin herself just seven months later,

according to online cataloguing service PubMed.McGill University and the Quebec Order of Psychologists are investigating.Read more about this story in Stuart Laidlaw's Medical Ethics Blog.

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