The honored studies of the pharmaceutical industry

Honored studies of the pharmaceutical industry? Often, unwanted studies are kept secret so that sales of medicines do not collapse?

(23.05.2010) It is in the cause of nature that adequate health research hardly fits in with the economic interests of the corporations. As the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) found out, study results were often not published. This dangerous secrecy of studies has probably already cost tens of thousands of lives, as the IQWiG in the journal Trial says.

The omission of unwanted studies is not an isolated description of a pharmaceutical company, but according to IQWiG very widespread. "The collection reads like a sketchbook to a crime series," said the scientists of the institute. According to IQWiG, 900 studies have been produced in the US alone of 90 approved drugs. However, after five years of drug approval, 60 percent of the study's findings were not published. Because otherwise they would have had a negative effect on the sales of the drugs? Moreover, the drug companies are not afraid to retrospectively rewrite studies to make them appear in a more positive light. "As a result, study results are often presented more positively than they actually are," said Beate Wieseler from IQWiG to Berliner Zeitung "taz".

In this context one could speak of inhumane manipulation. Because with the sometimes serious health consequences, the patients have to live. Unpublished studies and retrospectively manipulated study results can lead to serious health consequences. "As a result, doctors and patients use therapies that are in fact useless or even harmful," says the IQWiG. Scientists believe that, for example, in the 1980s, cardiac arrhythmia drugs have cost the lives of tens of thousands of people because trial results suggesting serious side effects have not been published.

Due to the fact that study results are still kept secret, the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) requires legal regulations so that all results are published completely and promptly. Appeals to companies and voluntary solutions have obviously not resolved the problem today. The IQWiG is an independent scientific institute, the benefits and harms of medical interventions
examined for patients. Clients for investigations are exclusively the Federal Joint Committee as well as the Federal Ministry of Health. (Sb)

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