Follow up on the WSJs article re the medical communities inherent corruption, the Tribune writes:
Journal tightens rules for authors
Doctors must disclose conflicts of interest
Despite a Chicago-based national medical journal's efforts to require contributing doctors to disclose their ties to the pharmaceutical industry, physicians don't always abide by the rules--even during a period of intense scrutiny of drugmaker-doctor relationships.In Wednesday's weekly edition the Journal of the American Medical Association is expected to issue a correction on a February article it published about a major depression study.
“Most of the 13 authors” failed to disclose they were paid consultants to drugmakers, according to a Wall Street Journal article Tuesday.
The study warned about risks of relapsing into depression for pregnant women who stop taking prescribed antidepressants. The article arrived at a good time for makers of antidepressants, who had been under recent scrutiny about the safety of their medications when used during pregnancy, the newspaper reported.
Doctors have been under fire for allegedly allowing drug company gifts and payments to cloud their judgment when writing purportedly unbiased articles that could influence physicians' prescribing practices.
What's the solution? Perhaps penalties are in order: take away the keys to their Lamborghinis?
One such group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said researchers who do not disclose their ties to industry should be banned for at least three years from publishing in the affected medical journal.“The only solution is for journals to adopt strong penalties for authors who fail to disclose,” the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in a statement.
Merrill Goozner, a project director for the center, said his organization has a database that would have taken JAMA editors about “two minutes” to check on whether the doctors had conflicts of interest.
Tags: corruption
