RAEF2003
06-03-2003, 03:04 PM
June 2, 2003, 10:40 a.m.
Blairly Accurate
Health reporting at the Times.
By Robert Goldberg
A recent lead story in New York Times, "Leading Drugs for Psychosis Come Under Scrutiny," suggested that the newest schizophrenia medicines had been marketed as wonder drugs only to be as exposed as no better than older, cheaper medications. To make this case, the writer, Erica Goode, noted that "researchers at the [American Psychiatric Association] meetings presented a study of the cost effectiveness of Zyprexa (one of the newer medications) in treating patients at 17 Veterans Affairs medical centers. The study, led by Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale and the director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Northeast Program Evaluation Center, found that Zyprexa cost the V.A. $3,000 to $9,000 more per patient, with no benefit to symptoms, Parkinson's-like side effects or overall quality of life." Goode exultantly pointed out that the damning study had been "financed by Eli Lilly" — the company that made the drug.
But here's the problem. There is no study. A search of the American Psychiatric Association website listing all the papers that were presented came up empty. Dozens of other papers and posters on new schizophrenia medicines were given at the APA, demonstrating their benefits as well as Zyprexa's superiority. But the "study" Goode cites is not even a study; it is raw data not submitted to a journal for peer review, and indeed not even in paper form. It was discussed at something called a data caucus.
Goode never mentions them — or the dozens of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals that demonstrate that no one drug will work best in all situations and that various combinations of medications will be required based on side effects, symptoms, and increasing scientific knowledge.
Why would a New York Times reporter call something a study when it isn't? Why would she cite a study that really didn't exist and ignore others that did? Why would she leave out the crucial fact that more people are on drugs for schizophrenia now than were ten years ago because we now have more medicines that can actually treat their disorders? For the same reason that Jayson Blair got away with journalistic murder for so long: If the viewpoint matters more than facts or objectivity, then who cares?
Blair at least had an excuse: He was in his apartment, and had to invent facts and figures. But the Times's health-care reporters have the information provided to them; they simply choose to ignore it.
The Times article is part of a war the newspaper has been waging against pharmaceutical research and development for a number of years. The theme is always the same. Drug and biotech companies develop drugs of marginal value, and then corrupt the practice of medicine because they market their products and pay for research on the drugs by themselves. The solution is also always the same: Let the government determine what the best medicines are, and require doctors to follow the state's guidelines.
Goode's article at least acknowledges that new schizophrenia drugs have some benefits. While her bias against the industry is subtle and the selectivity hard to ferret out, Melody Petersen — the other Times reporter who follows the pharmaceutical industry — is blatantly one-sided and misleading. Petersen uses her reporter's perch to prove that pharmaceutical and biotech firms have been corrupting medical research and endangering the lives of millions of Americans with the way they market and develop drugs.
Petersen's theory: Drug companies first bribe doctors with cash, gifts, and dinners to write favorable articles in medical journals about their products; then they spend boatloads of cash advertising these drugs directly to the doctors in what Petersen melodramatically calls "behind the scene" marketing. According to Dr. Melody, the result is that all but a bare handful of courageous and principled physicians are ultimately prescribing crap to an unsuspecting public.
Petersen's article "Diuretics' Value Drowned Out By Trumpeting of Newer Drugs" is a particularly virulent example of this style of reporting. She begins by stating: "Many experts have told doctors for years that diuretics, a type of medicine that costs just pennies a day, are the best drugs to treat high blood pressure. But those recommendations have been nearly drowned out by the major drug companies, which have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing their newer and higher-priced blood pressure medicines, particularly calcium channel blockers and ACE inhibitors."
Of course, in making this claim, Petersen fails to acknowledge she is talking about a large government study that generated more controversy than consensus even among those that participated in it. That's because the study itself found that there were absolutely no differences among these drugs in preventing heart attacks — the principal and original focus of the study. All the supposed benefit came from increases among black patients who had been denied diuretics or calcium-channel blockers when they needed them.
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comm...dberg060203.asp
Blairly Accurate
Health reporting at the Times.
By Robert Goldberg
A recent lead story in New York Times, "Leading Drugs for Psychosis Come Under Scrutiny," suggested that the newest schizophrenia medicines had been marketed as wonder drugs only to be as exposed as no better than older, cheaper medications. To make this case, the writer, Erica Goode, noted that "researchers at the [American Psychiatric Association] meetings presented a study of the cost effectiveness of Zyprexa (one of the newer medications) in treating patients at 17 Veterans Affairs medical centers. The study, led by Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a professor of psychiatry and public health at Yale and the director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Northeast Program Evaluation Center, found that Zyprexa cost the V.A. $3,000 to $9,000 more per patient, with no benefit to symptoms, Parkinson's-like side effects or overall quality of life." Goode exultantly pointed out that the damning study had been "financed by Eli Lilly" — the company that made the drug.
But here's the problem. There is no study. A search of the American Psychiatric Association website listing all the papers that were presented came up empty. Dozens of other papers and posters on new schizophrenia medicines were given at the APA, demonstrating their benefits as well as Zyprexa's superiority. But the "study" Goode cites is not even a study; it is raw data not submitted to a journal for peer review, and indeed not even in paper form. It was discussed at something called a data caucus.
Goode never mentions them — or the dozens of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals that demonstrate that no one drug will work best in all situations and that various combinations of medications will be required based on side effects, symptoms, and increasing scientific knowledge.
Why would a New York Times reporter call something a study when it isn't? Why would she cite a study that really didn't exist and ignore others that did? Why would she leave out the crucial fact that more people are on drugs for schizophrenia now than were ten years ago because we now have more medicines that can actually treat their disorders? For the same reason that Jayson Blair got away with journalistic murder for so long: If the viewpoint matters more than facts or objectivity, then who cares?
Blair at least had an excuse: He was in his apartment, and had to invent facts and figures. But the Times's health-care reporters have the information provided to them; they simply choose to ignore it.
The Times article is part of a war the newspaper has been waging against pharmaceutical research and development for a number of years. The theme is always the same. Drug and biotech companies develop drugs of marginal value, and then corrupt the practice of medicine because they market their products and pay for research on the drugs by themselves. The solution is also always the same: Let the government determine what the best medicines are, and require doctors to follow the state's guidelines.
Goode's article at least acknowledges that new schizophrenia drugs have some benefits. While her bias against the industry is subtle and the selectivity hard to ferret out, Melody Petersen — the other Times reporter who follows the pharmaceutical industry — is blatantly one-sided and misleading. Petersen uses her reporter's perch to prove that pharmaceutical and biotech firms have been corrupting medical research and endangering the lives of millions of Americans with the way they market and develop drugs.
Petersen's theory: Drug companies first bribe doctors with cash, gifts, and dinners to write favorable articles in medical journals about their products; then they spend boatloads of cash advertising these drugs directly to the doctors in what Petersen melodramatically calls "behind the scene" marketing. According to Dr. Melody, the result is that all but a bare handful of courageous and principled physicians are ultimately prescribing crap to an unsuspecting public.
Petersen's article "Diuretics' Value Drowned Out By Trumpeting of Newer Drugs" is a particularly virulent example of this style of reporting. She begins by stating: "Many experts have told doctors for years that diuretics, a type of medicine that costs just pennies a day, are the best drugs to treat high blood pressure. But those recommendations have been nearly drowned out by the major drug companies, which have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing their newer and higher-priced blood pressure medicines, particularly calcium channel blockers and ACE inhibitors."
Of course, in making this claim, Petersen fails to acknowledge she is talking about a large government study that generated more controversy than consensus even among those that participated in it. That's because the study itself found that there were absolutely no differences among these drugs in preventing heart attacks — the principal and original focus of the study. All the supposed benefit came from increases among black patients who had been denied diuretics or calcium-channel blockers when they needed them.
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comm...dberg060203.asp