Profits vs. patients: rigged clinical trials report

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va & aid=10846

Rigged Clinical Trials: Drug Studies Favor the Pharmaceutical Companies

Companies more concerned with profits than with patients

Global Research, November 7, 2008

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service - 2008-11-05

If you have often suspected that drug studies are rigged by the

pharmaceutical manufacturer, you are right. " Drug studies skewed

toward study sponsors, " reported The Washington Post. (1) " Industry-

funded research often favors patent-holders, study finds. "

Specifically, the American Journal of Psychiatry study authors said,

" In 90% of the studies, the reported overall outcome was in favor of

the sponsor's drug... On the basis of these contrasting findings in

head-to-head trials, it appears that whichever company sponsors the

trial produces the better antipsychotic drug. " (2)

Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal

of Medicine, agrees. " Is there some way (drug) companies can rig

clinical trials to make their drugs look better than they are?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Trials can be rigged in a dozen

ways, and it happens all the time. " One " way to load the dice, " she

writes, " is to enroll only young subjects in trials, even if the

drugs being tested are meant to be used mainly in older people.

Because young people generally experience fewer side effects, drugs

will look safer. " Another of the " common ways to bias trials is to

present only part of the data - the part that makes the product look

good - and ignore the rest. " She adds, " The most dramatic form of

bias is out-and-out suppression of negative results. " (3)

You will rarely hear academia complain. Why? Because they are aboard

the gravy train. Dr. Angell: " Columbia University, which patented the

technology used in the manufacture of Epogen and Cerezyme, collected

nearly $300 million in royalties " in 17 years. " The patent was based

on NIH-funded research. " That means you, the taxpayer, footed the

bill. Harvard is in just as deep. In its own Faustian dealings with

the drug companies, " a Harvard hospital has a deal that gives

Novartis rights to discoveries that lead to new cancer drugs ...

Merck is building a twelve-story research facility next door to

Harvard Medical School . . . In Harvard Medical School 's Dean's

Report for 2003-4, the list of benefactors included about a dozen of

the largest drug companies. "

Clearly drug companies are more concerned with profits than with

patients.

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