Tricks Drug Companies Use

Vernon Coleman

Drug companies use a number of tricks to ensure that they get the results they want. Here are some:

* The company compares its own product with a treatment which is known to be inferior. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to compare a new painkiller or arthritis treatment with ordinary non-soluble aspirin. Since non-soluble aspirin is known to cause gastrointestinal problems it isn't easy to show that the new product is `best'.

* The company ensures that its new wonder drug is compared either with a very low dose of the competing drug (in which case the competing drug probably doesn't work) or with a very high dose of the competing drug (in which case the competing drug probably produces very unpleasant side effects).

* One of the favourite tricks is to perform experiments on animals. These are a guaranteed success. If animals do not die or fall ill when given a drug then the company making it will announce that the drug has been proved to be safe. On the other hand, if animals do die or fall ill, the company making the drug will announce that it is ignoring the results because animals are different to people. You will doubtless suspect that I am making this up. I am not. Doctors, politicians and official custodians of patient safety all accept this nonsense. (There is evidence proving this point in my book Animal Experiments: Simple Truths and on this website. For example, Animal Experiments: Simple Truths contains a list of 46 drugs which may cause tumours or cancer when given to animals but which are marketed and passed as safe for humans.)

* The company takes a lot of measurements, ignores the ones which are inconvenient and publishes the ones which make their product look good. (So, for example, they may give their product to patients for a month. At the end of the month all the patients may be dead. They will ignore that inconvenient result. But they will publish the results which show that patients had fewer symptoms after five days.)

* The company will pay numerous sets of researchers to conduct the same research. They will then ignore the results which are inconvenient and publish the one which makes their product look good.

* Drug companies will pay researchers not to publish unfavourable research results.

* At least half of the articles on drug efficacy which appear in medical journals are ghost-written by people working for drug companies. Allegedly distinguished doctors from allegedly prestigious universities then allow their names to be put on the papers - often without ever looking at the original data. The doctors do this because an academic's status depends very much on the number of scientific papers he publishes.

Taken from Coleman's Laws by Vernon Coleman, published by EMJ Books. Coleman's Laws is available from the shop on this website and from all good bookshops everywhere - on and off line.

Copyright Vernon Coleman 2007