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"Drug profits infect medical studies
By John Abramson

January 7, 2006

SEVERAL OF OUR most venerated scientific journals have recently been
besmirched by allegations of scientific misconduct. Shocking? We should
be just as shocked as Inspector Renault when he discovered gambling at
Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.

First, the New England Journal of Medicine made public its concerns
about crucial data having been withheld from its 2000 report on a study
sponsored by Merck exaggerating the safety of its blockbuster drug
Vioxx, now withdrawn. Then the lead author of a seminal article
published in the journal Science reporting the creation of viable stem
cells from cloned human embryos admitted he falsified results and
resigned his academic post in disgrace.

This week brings the news that a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary failed to
include the deaths of two patients in a clinical trial of its new drug
for heart failure, Natrecor, in an article published in the Journal of
Emergency Medicine."

The article goes on to discuss the impact of the problem.

Susan