The scourge of the pharmaceutical industry has struck again in the United States.
Senator Charles ‘Chuck’ Grassley has been hounding big-pharma over perceived bad-behaviour in an ongoing and wide-ranging investigation. Now he is demanding Wyeth cough up details of its ‘ghost-writing’ activities.
“I have been informed that this practice involves marketing and/or medical education companies that draft outlines and/or manuscripts of review articles, editorials, and/or research papers,” writes Grassley in a letter released Friday.
“This information is then presented to prominent doctors and scientists, particularly those affiliated with academic institutions, to review, edit and sign on as authors, whether or not they are intimately familiar with the underlying data and relevant documentation.”
The senator goes on to say that it is alleged Wyeth “has been and may still be” engaging in ghost-writing. Grassley also wants DesignWrite Inc, a medical-writing company, to cough up details of various pieces of work it has done for Wyeth.
Wyeth says the allegations are rehashing past arguments “that have been rejected by judges and juries alike” (Wall Street Journal). “The authors of the articles in question, none of whom were paid, exercised substantive editorial control over the content of the articles and had the final say, in all respects, over the content,” spokesman Doug Petkus says (NY Times).
One researcher involved in allegedly putting their name on a ghost-written paper, Lila Nachtigall, of New York University, told the NY Times, “It kind of makes me laugh that with what goes on in the Senate, the senator’s worried that something’s ghost-written. I mean, give me a break.”
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