In April, 2008, I told you that your world had shaken but you probably missed it (Journal of the American Medical Association Blasts Merck for “Impugning the Integrity of Medical Science” ). Well, it just shook again! This time Wyeth, the manufacturer of Prempro, a hormone replacement drug, has been caught paying “ghostwriters” to create so-called medical literature which big name doctors will then publish as if it was their research. Prempro is a drug that has been linked in a national study to increasing a woman’s risk of stroke, heart attack, blood clots, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

This all came about in joint motions filed by plaintiffs in litigation with Wyeth, as well as “motions to intervene” filed by the New York Times and PLoS Medicine, a medical journal published by the non-profit Public Library of Science. I am thrilled to report that PLoS Medicine was represented by Public Justice – a non-profit on whose Board I am proud to serve. This was part of Public Justice’s Access to Justice work. Congratulations to attorney Amy Radon, Public Justice’s Goldberg, Waters & Kraus fellow who was the lead attorney on behalf of PLoS Medicine.

This Order is monumental. As reported today by the New York Times:”The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.”

I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this. The Times reported that this practice is widespread in the industry. Senator Grassley has requested further information and there may yet be a government investigation into this practice which is clearly intended to boost sales for big pharma.