In a recent editorial release from the New York Times the reliability of certain medical journals was analyzed and found grotesquely false in many cases, with a couple glaring examples from the Journal of the American Medical Association and Neuropsychopharmacology, a lesser known medical journal. In the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), antidepressant drugs were promoted as extremely beneficial, warning pregnant women that withdrawal from antidepressant medication would significantly increase chances of slipping back into depression. These statements lack foundation when it is taken into consideration that most of the 13 authors involved in the journal had been paid as consultants or lecturers by antidepressant manufacturers. Their financial obligations were left unmentioned in their consultations with JAMA because allegedly they were deemed “irrelevant”. With bias in the media, important medical information may be neglected to the public resulting in false representation of a bad product or dangerous procedure.
The same example applied to Neuropsychopharmacology, wherein eight of the nine authors advocating a controversial new treatment to therapy-resistant clinical depression were on the payroll of the company producing the product advertised. The ninth author worked directly for the company. The lead author of the depression study is the journal’s editor and a consultant to the product company, holding a history of accusations concerning financially tied product and therapy promotion.
The New York Times editorial argues the fallibility of these journals in both their allowance of such baised authors to promote false standards and in the lack of association between the authors and their employers. The article pushes for journals that promote authors free of conflict for more credible information.
You can find the editorial on conflicted medical journals here, at www.nytimes.com.
If you’re looking for more reliable information on health hazards and dangerous drugs, feel free to contact a personal injury attorney specializing in dangerous procedures and pharmaceutical injuries such as Pomerantz, Perlberger and Lewis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
