Playing (paying?) doctor

I bought the Atlantic for my recent transatlantic flight and got some interesting stuff to ponder up there in the blue wonder… One of the articles made me think yet again about the problems regarding the “working with/in pharma” (also known as "evil pharma" or "Pentex") and since I am – sort of – working in pharma now, have worked with pharma before (all in all more than three different companies and various outcomes*) I think it would be one of those things we scientists should be honestly talking about. Not to mention the publishers, as mentioned in the article for example.

It’s not only the MDs who get fringes and benefits from working with a special company… in order to be more likely to write a prescription with that specific drug" (sometimes not even intentional)… no… there are a bunch of PhDs doing some (imho) things on the shadier side of murky.

It’s all part of the “full disclosure thing” . I’m sure it happens in the lab not joined with the company too, it’s just that I am annoyed with all this “put your name under this article and we’ll give you some money for your research”. I can’t say I’m shocked – just tired that people who live on having “a good reputation” would go for this. And the damage that is done to the reputation of a whole community in the end...

And then the poor medical writers, I guess part of me would want to call them “ArtDirectors” or “Publicists” since they do more of the “polish and sell” than “telling the truth” or even "telling the whole story". Again, it would be a better feeling in me if the journals that publish this would be open about it, pull the papers and – especially now in this day and age when all different kinds of people go out on the internet to get informed decisions(tm) - make up their mind about stuff it would be very important to make it clear that some of these articles are Retracted and not telling the whole story.

Then again, I live in fantasy land where words like integrity and honesty are valid words that are cared about. I do know though, that the words money and successful are often more important and the driving force for plenty … not that they are mutually exclusive... but they aren't really hard-linked all the time in the world I see.

I'm left with the qoute from the end of the article: “They are well-paid technicians who perform a specialized service for their clients, often without a whole lot of agonizing about the ethics. Even if writers were to cultivate a little moral anguish, they probably could not do a lot with it. Like lobbyists, public-relations consultants, and hit men, medical writers are instruments in a much larger enterprise. Their moral problem lies in the structure of the job itself.”

It might be a bit harsh, then again – I never said I wanted to be a grey scale person all the time.



*I could say that one company wanted the study to get pulled, i.e. not published since the desired effect [they'd wanted] wasn’t observed. One company sort of wanted some of the data pulled and not mentioned even done… since it was “difficult to sell it as a good spin” and one company said “let’s just show what we got and live with it – it’s not like other companies have 100% success rate either”. As long as you are aware of what you are ok with as a scientist (and for your track record) I think you should be fine. But it is always important to suss out details BEFORE agreeing to do a study that will take time and effort and if you won’t be able to publish unless you get the desired outcome – be sure you are ok with that… [read; have some other research going at the same time]