Drug Company Implosion: Bush Laissez Faire Government - Regulates Nothing

Now the Wall Street Journal is not an activist leftist rag. Yet even they have awoken to the pitiful state of affairs left in the wake of two terms of Bush-do-nothingism.

Drug companies don't like the results of a study - so what! Suppress it! Sell more drugs - whether they work or not!

America - ain't it a great country?

Negative Studies of Depression Meds Remain Unpublished
Posted by Jacob Goldstein

Industry-sponsored studies of antidepressants that come up with positive results are more likely to be published than those that come up with negative results, says a paper in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

The authors looked at 74 antidepressant studies that had been filed with the FDA, and found that those deemed positive by the agency went unpublished only 3% of the time, while those deemed negative by the agency went unpublished 67% of the time. When unfavorable studies were published, it was in a way that conflicted with the FDA’s opinion of the study, according to the article.

Eric Turner, one of the authors of the study, once worked at the FDA reviewing data on psychotropic drugs. He told the WSJ that the idea for the study was triggered in part by colleagues who questioned the need for further clinical drug trials looking at the effectiveness of anti-depressants.

“There is a view that these drugs are effective all the time,” said Turner, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University. “I would say they only work 40% to 50% of the time, and they would say, ‘What are you talking about? I have never seen a negative study.’ ”

Pfizer and Wyeth, which sell two of the drugs included in the study, declined to comment on the article. Both companies told the WSJ they had committed to disclose all of their study results, but not necessarily in medical journals.