"Drug companies that pay for research and clinical tests of new
medicines have been suppressing or manipulating the results, a report in
the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine said.


The prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal also warned the likelihood that
drug test results will be manipulated or suppressed is even greater when
for-profit companies set up specifically to test drugs conduct the
trials.


The findings appear in an article, "Uneasy Alliance - Clinical
Investigators and the Pharmaceutical Industry," written by the Journal's
national correspondent, Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer...


The Bodenheimer report and the drug studies, along with a sharply worded
editorial where Dr. Marcia Angell raises the question "Is Academic
Medicine For Sale?" appears one week after the Journal's publisher, the
Massachusetts Medical Society, announced it would replace her as editor
with a prominent asthma researcher who has strong ties to the drug
industry.


Unfavorable Studies Stopped
Bodenheimer's report comes at a time when "academic medical centers are
no longer the sole citadels of clinical research" and the industry is
wielding more power in conducting large-scale drug tests, the Journal
said.


Six of the 12 investigators Bodenheimer interviewed "cited cases of
articles whose publication was stopped or whose content was altered by
the funding company," the Journal reported. The companies are not
identified.


In one instance, a drug maker delayed publication of a study's results
by requesting changes to the manuscript to make the product look better.
"During the delay, the company secretly wrote a competing article on the
same topic, which was favorable to the company's viewpoint," the Journal
said.


Another investigator "found that a drug he was studying caused adverse
reactions. He sent his manuscript to the sponsoring company for review.
The company vowed never to fund his work again and published a competing
article with scant mention of the adverse
effects," the Journal said..."


http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/conflicts000518.html