A Georgetown professor said in a journal article last week that many medical researchers face potential conflicts of interest when asked to take credit for anonymously-written studies funded by pharmaceutical companies.
In her article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Adriane Fugh-Berman, adjunct associate professor of physiology and biophysics, also called for the creation of a national database to monitor such conflicts of interest.
Last summer, a medical education company asked Fugh-Berman – a specialist in herbs and dietary supplements – to sign her name to a study written anonymously on the disadvantages of warfarin, an drug that prevents the clotting of blood. The company was hired by a pharmaceutical corporation, which Fugh-Berman later found out wanted to market a competitor drug to warfarin. Fugh-Berman refused the offer and instead decided to write an article on her experience.
“The ghostwriters of articles submitted to medical journals are paid by pharmaceutical companies to represent the interests of those companies,” Fugh-Berman said in an interview. “Academics should represent independent intellectual inquiry. Accepting money or publication credit for an article designed to serve a commercial interest provides scientific cover for a marketing piece.”
Although this conflict of interest may be difficult to track, it could have an impact on Georgetown professors due to its closeness to plagiarism, Ken Dretchen, chair of the pharmacology department, said.
“While the Medical Center doesn’t have any specific policies addressing this particular type of ghostwriting, any type of ghostwriting would be an act of plagiarism, which, of course, is in violation of principles laid out in the faculty handbook,” Dretchen said.
Dretchen praised Fugh-Berman’s article on ghost-writing as a revealing study.
“The issues raised in Dr. Fugh-Berman’s commentary are important ones,” he said. “It’s an interesting situation, and it’s very important that we continue to shed light on these issues.”
Conflicts of interest involving company-funded research may not always be clear. Arrangements between medical education companies and medical researchers are often discreet, and often medical conferences have corporate sponsorship, the article said.
“At this point, it is impossible to speak at national, or even most local, medical meetings without being paid directly or indirectly by pharmaceutical companies,” Fugh-Berman said. “Talks that directly or indirectly promote increased prescribing for a drug are conflicted, but it could certainly be argued that even unconflicted talks support company goals.”
While researchers are often permitted to make changes to the study they are asked to author, they remain unaware of any instructions regarding tone and emphasis that pharmaceutical companies gave to the original ghost author, Fugh-Berman said.
“Ghostwriters are invisible because their invisibility advances marketing goals,” she said. “[Guest] authors are showcased because their visibility advances marketing goals.”
However, science and marketing are an unethical combination for Fugh-Berman, who proposed a national database to monitor medical conflicts of interest, similar to the one the Center for Science in the Public Interest maintains.
“[The database] should be run by an independent nonprofit, be available to medical journals, media, and the public, and be correctable,” Fugh-Berman said.
Amy DeMaria, director of communications at the Medical Center, said that although the university does not track the number of peer-reviewed studies Georgetown faculty publish, “there are dozens each month.”