A Letter Writer's Imagination

Submitted by Bob Burton on

A doctor who featured in the PR plans of the drug company GlaxoSmithKline has been appointed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to a committee reviewing possible links between anti-depressant drugs and suicidality. In December 2004, internal GlaxoSmithKline documents revealed that Dr. Bruce Pollock had been identified by the PR firm Ruder Finn (RF) as one of four psychiatrists who could be approached to submit a letter to a medical journal downplaying withdrawal symptoms experienced by those who stopped taking the drug Paxil. Carl Elliot writes that a letter by Pollock, similar to RF's draft, was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. "There was no disclosure, no mention of industry funding, no mention of 'editorial assistance,' and no mention of Ruder Finn," Elliot wrote. In 2004, Pollock stated that the letter was his work. However, he said that he "could imagine a scenario where a representative from the makers of Paxil said, 'Could you make this point?'"

Main Source: 
BioEthics, December 12, 2006
Topics: 
Issue Management
Third Party Technique
Ethics
Pharmaceuticals
Public Relations
Science
U.S. Government

Comments

jupiter replied on

I know very little about this subject personally --- and I have no first-hand personal experience with it.

But I understand a book has been out on this subject for years, called something like Prozac: Panacea or Pandora. (I don't know how to get the underliner to work.) I forget the author's name. Annette somebody? Or maybe it was Prozac: Pandora or Panacea --- something like that.

Also this author has had a website called www.drugawareness.org (I think it is .org, but maybe it is .net --- sorry I am afraid to surf to find out for sure because of viruses and internet spying and all. I want to keep this computer free of infections. But please be careful if you surf to find it because sometimes phoney sites will pose under a similar sounding website but a different domain name. Also, it was years ago that I actually even looked at this website, and so hopefully it is not under different ownership or management now.)

SO PATHETIC AND SO TRAGIC IF HER BOOK IS VALID, or even a fraction of it. Because it came out YEARS ago --- probably at least ten or more years ago.

But the drug companies didn't want to stop the racket because, as I recall it being said, they were making 7 million dollars a day on the drugs.

Kum by ya, my Lord, is all I can think to say. Marketeering has gone even more extreme.