(my area newspaper has a new "health" section which comprises 2 to 4 pages of "health" advice, often highly recommending diagnostic testing and using fear to persuade readers to "see their doctors", coupled with a BIG push for vaccinations. This "new, expanded " section added in the face of greatly diminished newsprint otherwise. I wondered if the pharma industry was behind this "new" journalism. The following article is only about Murdoch's Australian media; are we being primed for the "ask your doctor about this new drug"?)

http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d6978


Is journalism the drug industry’s new dance partner?
BMJ 2011; 343 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d6978 (Published 2 November 2011)
Cite this as: BMJ 2011;343:d6978


Ray Moynihan, author, journalist, and conjoint lecturer, University of Newcastle, Australia
Ray.Moynihan@newcastle.edu.au
Exploring the new frontier in influence peddling

Just as many doctors contemplate an end to their dance with drug company marketers, a fresh new crew is stepping lively onto the floor: journalists and media organisations looking for easy ways to fund their reporting, travel, and education.

The BMJ reported last week that the Murdoch empire’s flagship newspaper in Australia has accepted an undisclosed amount of sponsorship money from the drug industry for a series of articles on health policy—and that the idea arose from a meeting between advertising agents.1

Defending the deal, the Australian’s editor said that independence and integrity were maintained; but as others pointed out, this new form of financial closeness between journalists and the companies they scrutinise raises real concerns.

A few years ago the industry body Medicines Australia started sponsoring annual journalism awards, with the prize for the health journalist of the year award including $A1000 cash (£660; €760; $US1060) and an international study tour. Presumably all recipients will swear that the award and the world trip had no undesirable effects on their future coverage, and they may well be right. But what we’re witnessing …

If you have been paying attention to the scores of drug ads in almost every magazine for years now, and on TV, this is simply the next step. The huge push for vaccines is the worst, to me, as they are now targeting people like myself who already were vaccinated as a child but, now lo and behold, they inform us the vaccines are not life-long but rather dissipate and thus we are unprotected. BS. I thought all those horrible diseases we get vaccinated as babies for are "childhood diseases", hence the push on new, terrfied-to-make-a-mistake-parents, to vaccinate the most vulnerable of us all. Now that they think they can double-dip and get babies AND grown-ups, they make this claim. Good luck.

I've also noticed I cannot go into any store, Walgreen's, CVS, grocery, Wal-Mart, it's everywhere, without someone offering to give me a flu and shingles shot. Pulllleeze. I've even been offered 10% off my grocery bill if I'll roll up my sleeve! It's scary.

At least one huge state college has apparently gotten in with the vaccine maker's camp...a few years ago, the University of Texas required all incoming freshman who were going to live in dormitory to get vacccinated with the meningitis vaccine. This year, the rule was changed to require ALL incoming freshman to have this vaccine, regardless of where they would be living. This is thousands of people. I wonder how in the world this came to pass....

I personally see drug maker's as becoming increasingly desperate as their patents on the blockbusters expire and no new promising drugs are on the horizon. The more generics that come out, the less they make, and the more reliance that will be placed on the stand-by money-maker: vaccines.

I realize R&D is horribly expensive, and some of the diseases out there incredibly complex (or are they?...if you keep insisting PD is onlyabout dopamine and nothing else...) but it's not like pharma has not been raking in mind-bogglingly obscene amounts of money over the years. Add to this the increased general awareness of a healthy lifestyle and people's desire to try to self-heal and that poses a heck of a problem to the bottom line. I'm watching for more vaccine pushing in the future, and fully expect one day to open my mail to find a bunch of ads for drugs mixed in there with all the other junk mail.

I share your concern about vaccines. It is very troubling!

Journalism and Pharma - the best reporter just got fired.

A number of times, here at Neurotalk, I have quoted from Jim Edwards, author of the Placebo Effect blog on BNET, a CBS interactive company. He came up with an endless stream of insider stories about Big Pharma, good and bad. An excellent investigative reporter, fearless and balanced. Well, he built up a following of several hundred thousand readers – and the fired him and shut down the Placebo Effect blog.
Jim says good-bye:
Eagle-eyed BNET.com readers will have noticed that Placebo Effect, my blog about pharmaceutical news, has not been updated recently. CBS Interactive has decided to discontinue my coverage of the drug industry.
It’s a shame for me personally because Placebo Effect had a monthly readership in the hundreds of thousands, and I broke some important stories in that venue.
I’m a realist, however. Advertisers don’t like it.
I’ve been writing about the drug industry on and since 2004. Doubtless, at some point in the future, I will once again patrol the pharma beat.
I’d like to thank all those of you who read the column on a regular basis. I know there were many of you. I read all your emails, and all your comments, and as many tweets as I can. I will miss our correspondence.
Jim Edwards

Lurking,

You bring up a very important topic...that of desperation by drug companies and normally I'd back up their apparent greed in a heartbeat, but we need to look from larger perspective. First and foremost all this goes down because our health is a commodity on an a free market. This never ever should have been and now will be half-***ed to try and make everyone happy. The next big issue is the FDA; I can't stress enough how much they need reform and far less power.

Take a gander at this site FDA Reform The FDA requires both safety, which of course we all agree is essential, but do we really need the efficacy proof in drug development? This puts a tremendous amount of financial strain on drug companies and squelches innovation. We all wonder why everything is so so dopa-centric; here is the answer. Drug companies going against the grain have to spend millions up front to go up against a fifty year old "gold standard" and if the new drug fails endpoints...they lose all that money.

This is in turn, I think, is driving drug companies to start pushing for vaccines or to develop frivolous drugs like the one now available for thickening your eyelashes. They need a bread and butter to bring in funding for their more "innovative" ventures.

I'll admit though the adverts are sickening. Recall the good old days when smoking could be advertised? Doctors were often a feature of the old time ads of the 40's and 50's. I have included a couple links to print and TV ads. Tobacco companies were in fierce competition to prove that their product was less harsh on the throat. Yep, obviously something that burns your throat is not so good for you, but hey docs smoke too, so what do they recommend?

http://www.archive.org/details/tobacco_tle13d00

Now that they know about cancer...but really our ads now take on a new tack. The media makes us health obsessed especially as a culture obsessed with youth, so now we need to get vaccinated against hangnails and medicated for urinary frequency. Doctors are still endorsing drugs they know very little about...I have seen a few here and there, and yes I agree the coupon coercion technique is beyond obnoxious.

Yet there is something more insidious that goes on now. In the era of cigarettes, you wouldn't see your doctor endorsing a daily pack of Camels unfiltered on your way out of the office. This is what we have going on now. Doctors are "bought" with gift giving; wining and dining, and in return Teva can count on 97% market share for newly diagnosed PWP. Who is going to question their doc? Same with the agonists but since they are post-patent they tap into the Restless Leg market. It all rather comes full circle back to the beastly FDA; this is why we have the situation at hand. I really think the print or TV ads are just there to give us the brand name recognition for when we go the doc. He is already a product endorser, all we have to do is ask for the drug.

What makes this even worse, imho, is that doctors become so "taken" with a current drug or class of drugs, they overlook what is best for the patient. Why would any doctor in his right, logical mind prescribe an SSRI for anyone with a profound neurotransmitter imbalance? There is clinical trial support in favor of the old school tri-cyclic antidepressants, and not many doctors will offer unless you ask.

I guess this just highlights how we are pawns in this system. With so many livelihoods at stake...I can see why the key players are so resistant to change, but I still cannot fully blame pharma for our woes.

Laura

[QUOTE= but I still cannot fully blame pharma for our woes. - Laura)

Agreed. Pharma sticks out because of the rawness of the greed, ever since the scientists, such as Dr. Merck, were replaced by fast-money lawyers and stock market dealers lunging for a card so high and wild they will never have to deal again. But it is not just Pharma, the Creator of Woes, as Laura points out. As your PD symptoms grab hold of your life, and you start to check out the empire that has been constructed around your disease, you find out that the disease is owned entirely by distant entities, without anyone speaking for the people who are actually being killed by it, and every layer you peel off reveals another layer - from top to bottom, from emergency room to science lab, from academic sloth to axes needing grinding, from "condition that existed previously and therefore not covered" health insurance to charities living high on the hog, to being fired from jobs just for the fact of having the disease, to being a visibly shaking minority that gets isolated and invisible, to being stonewalled by government agencies that are terrified of deciding anything, in case they are wrong, and get accused of allowing another thalidomide, to doctors in Florida paying $350K per year lawsuit insurance, to no one even tracking how many people have PD, to hospital personnel unaware of the existence of the disease -and then at the bottom of the blazing wreckage, there smoulders Amgen; and the GDNF story, which was a miniature summary of all of the above, with a massive dose of human rights failures baked into the cake.
All in all, taking into account every aspect of the Parkinson's Holy Empire, it would make a gigantic case study of just how dysfunctional a huge system can be - the cast of thousands, the expenditure of billions; Lancet claiming that one-third of PD medical studies are basically fraudulent; drugs disappearing and showing up for sale on the internet; it fails as a business model, it fails as a science model, it fails as a medical model, and it fails as a model of a caring society.
But we do get to turn the music up loud and at least pretend we
can dance. And things are changing - previous generations of Parkies had no Conductor 71, or Paula W, or Revertt123, or Imark or Soccertease - now the internet changes the game, and the future ain't gonna' look exactly like the past.
It could all be done, you know. Parkinson's could be defeated, for less than it is costing now.