Ghost Writers and Drug Companies
I was recently searching for information on hiring ghost writers and on accident I came across this article. The information in this article may be old news to some of you, but I was not aware of this. Apparently drug companies pay ghost writers to write articles about their drugs, and then they find doctors to put their name on the articles. The doctor gets paid for allowing the drug company to use their name as the author of the ghost written article.
Allegedly, many of the drug companies persuade the ghost writers to write favorable reviews of their drugs. That seems to make perfectly good marketing sense. It is however UNETHICAL!
This news doesn't surprise me considering how many doctors I go to that try to push medicines on me that have horrendous side effects, where the side effects far outweigh the benefits.
I remember how our (former) pediatrician once spent a lot of time convincing us to give our second child (Adam) the "roto virus" vaccine. We weren't sure about getting it, but she convinced us (wore us down). Two weeks later they recalled the vaccine because of the potential horrendous side effects (kids having to have surgery to fix their stomachs). That's when we became very leary of vaccines in general.
If I were President there would be some big changes to the medical industry (guess I won't be getting their vote). Since no drug company would be lining my pockets with money I could certainly try to make big changes. I would just need to find 435 people to run for Congress who weren't getting money from the medical industry. Then we could make some real changes to the medical industry.
Do you remember the story in the news not so long ago, where an Arizona police department was training a monkey to be spy? Instead of training monkeys to be spies I would train monkeys to be Congressmen! Then the monkeys could help me make big changes to our government, because they wouldn't have any ties to lobbyist. Another side benefit is that I would reduce the government's budget, because we could pay Congress with bananas. Just a thought...
Allegedly, many of the drug companies persuade the ghost writers to write favorable reviews of their drugs. That seems to make perfectly good marketing sense. It is however UNETHICAL!
This news doesn't surprise me considering how many doctors I go to that try to push medicines on me that have horrendous side effects, where the side effects far outweigh the benefits.
I remember how our (former) pediatrician once spent a lot of time convincing us to give our second child (Adam) the "roto virus" vaccine. We weren't sure about getting it, but she convinced us (wore us down). Two weeks later they recalled the vaccine because of the potential horrendous side effects (kids having to have surgery to fix their stomachs). That's when we became very leary of vaccines in general.
If I were President there would be some big changes to the medical industry (guess I won't be getting their vote). Since no drug company would be lining my pockets with money I could certainly try to make big changes. I would just need to find 435 people to run for Congress who weren't getting money from the medical industry. Then we could make some real changes to the medical industry.
Do you remember the story in the news not so long ago, where an Arizona police department was training a monkey to be spy? Instead of training monkeys to be spies I would train monkeys to be Congressmen! Then the monkeys could help me make big changes to our government, because they wouldn't have any ties to lobbyist. Another side benefit is that I would reduce the government's budget, because we could pay Congress with bananas. Just a thought...
posted by gmanty at 10:02 AM
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