Your Awesome Private Healthcare System

Posted on 08/05/2009 at 11:26 am by Bob Cesca

Via Balloon Juice:

Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.

The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

Yeah, so pharmaceutical companies lied to American women about HRT and as a consequence, many women became sick and died.

Best. Healthcare. System. Ever.

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  • Eric

    And if I recall correctly, it was around ’98 that pharma was given the go ahead to start advertising their products directly to consumers, and as a result we have more money being spent on that advertising in this country than on R&D. And the cost of those ad dollars are passed right along to us.I wonder how much Wyeth spent to advertise Premarin and Prempro?

  • Jan

    I really don’t know how these people sleep at night.

  • http://www.osborneink.com/2009/07/malkin-malevolence_31.html Matt Osborne

    Jan,they use money-therapy. Rolling in dough is very relaxing.

  • GItheJOE

    I believe that this is a language barrier between irrational people and rational people.”Best Healthcare in the World!”Means: Best Mutual Fund EverorMeans: Your liver has a price tag on it and so does your kids eyeballs.

  • EGB

    I used to work for a medical communications company. In the old days, you worked with the marketing departments to develop the ‘strategic message” for the clinical trial results. Don’t get me started on how I then had to take drs BY THE HUNDREDS to luxury resorts to ‘educate” them on what the trial results meant, based upon marketing’s spin.

  • http://kyrafrost.blogspot.com kacey

    I remember my daughter had to take birth control pills in order to take Accutane for her acne while in high school. No one told us the link between Accutane and depression. My daughter is now 29 (and of course has been on birth control pills ever since) and had a (fortunately very minor) stroke 6 months ago. She can only afford a very limited, major medical policy so all the follow-up office visits, tests, prescriptions, etc., are not covered. Will she be able to get coverage without health care reform? Not likely. Unfortunately, she works for Wall Street but is “self-employed” and pays her own insurance premiums. The irony? She can only afford them by working for Wall Street. Sadly, she’s still a Republican.

  • http://nowherethemiddle.blogspot.com/ Elizabeth

    I’m shocked, shocked, I tells ya… Pharmaceutical companies peddling unproven and (gasp) harmful drugs to increase their profits? What’s next, for-profit health care?!Holy crap! What’s the world coming to… I need me some of that money-therapy Matt proposes above to recover from this evil revelation.