July 30th, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in Opinion
No Comments »
For several years, I’ve been gently nudging various groups that communicate with the public about health care to adopt/endorse/promote the 10 criteria we use on HealthNewsReview.org in the same spirit in which we promote them: 10 things we think consumers need addressed in messages about health care interventions.
• What’s the total cost?
• How often do benefits occur?
• How often do harms occur?
• How strong is the evidence?
• Is this condition exaggerated?
• Are there alternative options?
• Is this really a new approach?
• Is it available to me?
• Who’s promoting this?
• Do they have a conflict of interest?
It may not be a perfect or complete list, but it’s not a bad starting point, and we now have data on more than 1,500 stories showing how these are – or are not – addressed in some of the public discussion.
I’ve urged the American Association of Medical Colleges, America’s Health Insurance Plans, news organizations, and news-release-writers, among others, to publish our criteria attached to their news releases or on their websites.
Many have been called. Many have nodded in agreement. None have responded.
Until now. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
July 21st, 2011 by Glenn Laffel, M.D., Ph.D. in News, Opinion
No Comments »
I thought I read the final chapter in the tale of Pfizer’s shady marketing practices for Neurontin years ago. Sadly, there’s at least one more chapter to go.
Recall that in 2008, leaked documents from a US District Court revealed that Pfizer had covered-up the results of a clinical trial which showed the drug didn’t work for chronic nerve pain, even as it promoted off-label use of the anti-seizure drug for that purpose. The next year, it was revealed that Parke-Davis (now a subsidiary of Pfizer) took advantage of lax disclosure policies by certain medical journals to publish 13 articles promoting off-label use of Neurontin that were ghostwritten and funded by the company without disclosing such arrangements.
Now, it has come to light that Parke Davis’ marketing department sponsored a Seeding Trial of Neurontin back in the day—that is, a trial portrayed deceptively as a patient study but whose real aim was to encourage prescribers to use the drug.
The trial was STEPS, the ‘Study of Neurontin: Titrate to Effect, Profile of Safety’ trial. More than 772 physician ‘investigators’ and 2800 patients participated in STEPS.
The stated objective of STEPS was to study the safety, efficacy and tolerability of Neurontin. However, after reviewing documents compiled for a pair of lawsuits against Pfizer and its subsidiaries, Joseph Ross and colleagues concluded that the actual objective was to increase prescribing rates by ‘investigators’ in the study. Neither the ‘investigators’ nor their patients were informed about the real purpose of STEPS.
The trial worked, from Parke-Davis’ point of view. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*
