Pretty seedy: Another shameful drug “study” that was actually marketing

Yesterday I told you about the shameful practice of “seeding.”

That’s when a drug company enrolls doctors as investigators for a clinical trial whose primary purpose is NOT to investigate a drug, but rather to make the doctors aware of the drug so they’ll prescribe it.

That would be shameful enough, but the REAL shame is that patients with serious health issues are duped into participating in these marketing scams.

While looking at background material, I came across a 2008 item about the accidental discovery of a seeding trial.

According to the Annals of Internal Medicine, this was the first “smoking gun” evidence to reveal the existence of a large-scale drug company seeding trial.

When researchers were going over piles of paperwork in preparation for a lawsuit against Merck, they say they found that a major drug trial called ADVANTAGE was actually a seeding trial.

The marketers who designed that trial must have had a chuckle or two over the trial’s name. “ADVANTAGE? Yeah — advantage US! High five!”

But the chuckling must have stopped abruptly when the drug’s heart attack and stroke dangers became glaringly evident. The drug was taken off the market in 2004 and Merck paid out close to $5 billion to settle personal injury lawsuits.

Sound familiar? It should. The drug was Vioxx.

Unbelievable! Who would have guessed there might be yet ANOTHER secret layer of shame to the whole disgraceful history of Vioxx?

One of the researchers who found the seeding evidence told the Associated Press: “I don’t think people would be willing to (risk side effects) if they knew that the aim of a clinical trial was to boost profits for a pharmaceutical company.”

We really need to change the mentality of patients to understand that everything the drug companies do is about boosting their profits. If they really wanted to help patients, they would be run by scientists, not marketers and accountants.

Source:
“A Key Vioxx Study Was Really A ‘Seeding Study'” Ed Silverman, Pharmalot, 8/18/08, pharmalot.com