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Published on Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org)

Drug Companies Dope Their Research -- It's All Good!

The pharmaceutical industry [1] is using a novel technique to cheer up people who suffer from clinical depression -- only publishing favorable studies about the effects of its antidepressant medications. A new study [2] in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at 74 studies registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration [3]. Of the 36 favorable studies, all but one was published. Of the 37 unfavorable studies, all but three were "either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies)." As Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley observes, "The result of this selective publication is no less than a distortion of science [4] and -- since these are studies that drive what doctors advise their patients to do and what patients ask for -- a perversion of the biomedical system in which untainted results are supposed to benefit public health."



Source URL:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6900