This summary of Part 1 of “The JAMA Controversy” contains ...



This summary of Part 1 of “The JAMA Controversy” contains much of the information from the original article, but without any of the hyperlinks, which I believe help to enforce my points. I hope that reading this summary will pique your interest, and that you will want to read the uncut version. But if you don’t, I hope this will have given you new information!

Part 1 -- Summary:

You’ve got to admit: When arrogance and stupidity run into each other, the results are bound to be disastrous.

That’s what happened following the controversy surrounding Wall Street Journal writer David Armstrong’s two articles in July, in which he disclosed that the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) was taken in twice in the last six months by researchers who failed to reveal their financial ties to drug companies.

One of these case studies in question concluded that pregnant women who stop taking their anti-depressant medications increase their risk of relapsing into depression. This point of view is controversial, so it was therefore not surprising that the study made headlines back in February.

But it was surprising that, as stated by the WSJ, “the study, and resulting television and newspaper reports of the research, failed to note that most of the 13 authors are paid as consultants or lecturers by the makers of antidepressants.” And again: “In total, the authors failed to disclose more than 60 different financial relationships with drug companies.”

After learning these facts, JAMA’s editor in chief, Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, said that JAMA will now have stricter author guidelines. In the following issue, she published a letter to the editor by the physician/authors, and –- for the first time -- a full list of their previously undisclosed financial ties.

When I read the authors’ letter and the list of financial ties, I I was shocked. The letter flatly denied that their financial associations with pharmaceutical companies constituted a conflict of interest, and should therefore have been disclosed prior to publication. In fact, the lead author, Harvard’s Dr. Lee Cohen, was noted by the WSJ as saying that his industry relationships have no influence on his research work or public comments on the issue.

However, Dr. Cohen’s financial connections, as listed in JAMA, were too numerous to ignore:

"Dr. Cohen reports having received grant support from AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Berlex Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Sepracor, and Wyeth-Ayerst; consulting for Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and Wyeth-Ayerst; and serving on the speakers bureau of AstraZeneca, Berlex, Eli Lilly, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Pfizer, and Wyeth-Ayerst."

Was this the end of the story? Not really. Just one week later, the Associated Press revealed: “Just days after announcing a crackdown on researchers who do not disclose drug company ties, the editor of a prestigious medical journal says she was misled again, this time by the authors of a study linking severe migraines to heart attacks in women.”

This time, all six study authors admitted to having done consulting work or received research funding from makers of treatments for migraines or heart-related problems. Again, “the authors said they did not report their financial ties because they did not believe they were relevant to the study.”

My reaction to all this: When will they ever learn? Or perhaps more to the point: Will they ever learn at all?

In Part 2 of this article, I take a public relations professional’s in-depth look at this story by giving readers an entirely different, and hopefully-eye-opening, perspective on this, and other similar medical financial-conflict stories.

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