Do medical journals serve the pharmaceutical industry?
Richard Smith, former director of BMJ, one of the most important pharmaceutical journals, denounces in a ruthless article the widespread practice of publishing in the most prestigious journals studies that favor the sales of drug multinationals.
The pharmaceutical companies are among the most prolific money-making machines in the world. This is not surprising, because they produce medicines, that is, the type of products that even the healthiest people, sooner or later, must become consumers of, perhaps only occasionally.
Dizzying interests revolve around drugs. Not only do multinationals active in the sector have budgets that make small nations envious, but everything that moves around their products ends up moving more or less large masses of money. And where there is a lot of money, there is inevitably corruption and self-interest takes the place of the public interest. Who does not remember, even today, the sofa full of money, the paintings and gold bars of DUILIO POGGIOLINI, Director General of the Pharmaceutical Department of the Ministry of Health at the time of Tangentopoli? Or the former health minister DE LORENZO, one of the few who personally paid the price for corruption?
The drug industry continually needs to market its products and to do so it must first of all convince the market that its medicines are good, indeed that they are the best. One of the most popular ways to obtain this result consists in obtaining the publication in the most authoritative journals of the medical sector of scientific studies, often sponsored by the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves, which demonstrate – precisely “scientifically” – the goodness of the products they put on the market. .
The article by RICHARD SMITH, which I translate below, is a clear denunciation of the subtle systems used by pharmaceutical companies to obtain publication in authoritative journals of studies favorable to the sale of their products.
Richard Smith, former director of BMJ, one of the most important pharmaceutical journals, denounces in a ruthless article the widespread practice of publishing in the most prestigious journals studies that favor the sales of drug multinationals.
The pharmaceutical companies are among the most prolific money-making machines in the world. This is not surprising, because they produce medicines, that is, the type of products that even the healthiest people, sooner or later, must become consumers of, perhaps only occasionally.
Dizzying interests revolve around drugs. Not only do multinationals active in the sector have budgets that make small nations envious, but everything that moves around their products ends up moving more or less large masses of money. And where there is a lot of money, there is inevitably corruption and self-interest takes the place of the public interest. Who does not remember, even today, the sofa full of money, the paintings and gold bars of DUILIO POGGIOLINI, Director General of the Pharmaceutical Department of the Ministry of Health at the time of Tangentopoli? Or the former health minister DE LORENZO, one of the few who personally paid the price for corruption?
The drug industry continually needs to market its products and to do so it must first of all convince the market that its medicines are good, indeed that they are the best. One of the most popular ways to obtain this result consists in obtaining the publication in the most authoritative journals of the medical sector of scientific studies, often sponsored by the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves, which demonstrate – precisely “scientifically” – the goodness of the products they put on the market. .
The article by RICHARD SMITH, which I translate below, is a clear denunciation of the subtle systems used by pharmaceutical companies to obtain publication in authoritative journals of studies favorable to the sale of their products.
Article by Michele Diodati
From the www. pesanervi.diodati.org
