Research Scientists Get An Offer They Can't Refuse

Big Pharma has never made a pretense of being ethically anything but challenged. Its products are designed for profit, and not adequately tested to insure the patients' safety, as we are increasingly learning. Testifying yesterday in hearings on the drug Avandia, which has proved that in addition to combating diabetes it has been endangering hearts of the patients using it, a researcher revealed methods of pure slime.

When professor John Buse of the University of North Carolina's medical school reported in 1999 that the popular diabetes drug Avandia was associated with an elevated risk of chest pain and heart attacks, he was doing what researchers do: engaging in scientific inquiry and presenting his findings.

Such unfettered research is one reason America is the world's scientific and technological leader. But, as Buse found out, some drugmakers put profit concerns above academic freedom, not to mention public safety.

Buse told a House panel Wednesday that when he expressed doubts about Avandia, he received calls from the drug's maker, the company now known as GlaxoSmithKline, that characterized him as "a liar" and threatened to hold him liable for a possible multi-billion dollar drop in the company's stock market value.
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And drugmakers routinely reward doctors who write lots of prescriptions for their products and lavish grants on researchers who come to their preferred conclusions.

Threats and coercion by the pharmaceutical industry are most particularly misplaced, as patients should be the concern rather than the victims of those firms. The lack of character in leading U.S. businesses seems to pervade the boardrooms to an extent that it is impossible to trust the business world. I would want to look very closely at any product of these businesses, and avoid all that I can.