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Merck caught faking Fosamax reviews

reversiblecat
0 Recommendations

Don't know if anyone else saw this. Recently Merck, maker of Fosamax, created a fake Peer-Review Journal which touted the superiority of Fosamax over other bone builders. But of course, it was all fake. Doctors. meanwhile, see these kind of journals and take them for gospel, and use them to prescribe drugs for patients.
http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/

Merck seems to have a history of false advertising.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1615.shtml

Explore topics in this discussion:

Osteoporosis Seizures Fosamax

4 replies

juliemarie

While these articles were interesting, reversiblecat, I don't see authority in them.

Even though Summer has a PhD after her name, her article is grammatically incorrect and even puzzling in some of her run-on sentences. Perhaps English is not her first language, which is positively understandable.

The last article, though well written, is by a cartoonist. Her information is compelling but she doesn't back up her assertions about bone resorbtion with references to actual scientific data. I would like to know where one could find that data.

I would like to take these articles verbatim since I was absolutely clobbered by a calcitonin nose spray: digestive upset, marshmallow fat around my stomach (still there), nausea, muscle seizures, etc. And, in the end, it did no good.

In the meantime, we should understand that these articles were about false or biased advertising and not about our favorite subject: how on earth do you cure this debilitating disease of osteoporosis?

drizzit

who sponsors the online journal? I agree these stories have little backup or confirmation from trusted sources.

While I don't really trust big pharma to make good decisions for my healthcare and I do think they put business before patient welfare, I would need more info than this to accept these charges as true

reversiblecat

An update. From theaustralian.news.com

"THE world's largest medical publisher, Elsevier, has expressed embarrassment at its role in a deceptive marketing ploy by the giant drug company Merck after it was revealed in a Melbourne court.

Elsevier said it had failed to meet its own "high standards for disclosure" when it produced a magazine that pretended to be an independent scientific journal but was actually a marketing front for Merck's anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx".

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25441167-23289,00.html

Also in the trial, it came out that Merck threatened doctors who opposed it's drugs.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25272600-2702,00.html

zeta

reversiblecat, thanks so much for bringing this to our attention. Oh my, threatening doctors and in effect, misrepresenting (to put it mildly) facts which doctors we see will then use to guide their decisions to treat patients, hardly a trivial matter!

zeta

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