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Corporate influence over clinical research: considering the alternatives

This text in the July issue of Prescrire International is based on a lecture given at the annual Prescrire Awards ceremony in Paris by Marc-André Gagnon PhD,  Assistant Professor in Public Policy at Carleton University (Canada) and Research Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University (USA).

Abstract
  • The dominant business model of the pharmaceutical sector is based on the massive promotion of drugs that often do not represent any significant therapeutic advance.
     
  • Clinical research is therefore run like a promotional campaign. The data obtained from clinical research are primarily used to boost and support sales rather than to improve prescribing behaviour.
     
  • Three common and widely used corporate strategies are used to this end: ghostwriters are employed to inflate the number of publications showing the drug in a positive light; results that would harm sales are not published (publication bias); and negative data are suppressed, sometimes going as far as to intimidate troublesome independent academics and whistle-blowers. The objective of these strategies is to enable the new drug to gain market share from its competitors.
     
  • If medicine is to progress, research must be more independent and freed from the commercial imperatives of the pharmaceutical industry.

> View videos of the lecture (in French)

©Prescrire 1 July 2012

"Corporate influence over clinical research: considering the alternatives " Prescrire Int 2012; 21 (129): 191-195. (Pdf, free).

 
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Videos of the lecture
"Corporate influence over
clinical research: considering
the alternatives"
Free (in French)