Today's Wall Street Journal has a (front page in the print edition) article that nicely summarizes some cases of a "Worrisome Ailment in Medicine: Misleading Journal Articles." It includes such cases as the controlled trial of Celebrex that included only six-month data (when the twelve-month data failed to show a benefit). As Jeffrey Drazen, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine put it, editors have "found themselves playing a game of hide-and-seek," including "experiences where authors tried to pitch it, where they were telling you the good news and not the bad."
(NB: the link above should work without requiring a subscription.)
Glad to see the WSJ print this. Pharma has strayed from its scientific roots and become spin machines that serve other masters in the taxonomy of priorities (namely, share price, profits, market share, etc.) over reason-based scientific inquiry.
ReplyDeleteJournals are funded by advertising from these money-machines; the authors are often on the doll so-to-speack (conflict of interest abounds); heck, even the grant-writers have been on the take (NIH scandal); paper factories flourish; and on and on; it therefore is no surprise that we have a garbage-in (research) garbage-out (publishing) situation.
Egan
My name is Jane Eaton and i would like to show you my personal experience with Celebrex.
ReplyDeleteI have taken for 11 months. I am 39 years old. Celebrex works too well, which is why it is so dangerous. It is one of the most effective things you can take for arthritis-type issues, and for controlling inflammation/pain after knee surgery. But the side effects are very extreme: intestinal bleeding/perforation, heart problems, and liver toxicity. I am allergic to Ibuprofen and Alleve, so Clebrex was a life saver. But I am not willing to sacrifice my liver for it. The ER staff told me that they see very serious side effects in Celebrex patients.
Side effects-
I ended up in the emergency room in extreme pain and hyperventilating because of liver problems.
I hope this information will be useful to others,
Jane Eaton