The Washington Post indicts drug industry for muddling research on new drugs, sometimes with deadly consequences.

A chilling story by Peter Whoriskey in The Washington Post shows how drug companies have misused their influence and their expertise to corrupt and distort research on new drugs. "Over the past decade, corporate interference has repeatedly muddled the nation’s drug science, sometimes with potentially lethal consequences," Whoriskey writes.

Much of what Whoriskey reports has been reported before, but he expertly weaves together reporting, analyses of publications, and the results of a Senate investigation into a devastating indictment of the drug industry.

He begins recounting the story of Avandia, a diabetes drug that GlaxoSmithKline claimed outperformed its competitors, according to a study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. He then reminds us that it was associated with 83,000 heart attacks and deaths. But he reports that hints of the problem were there in the original study.

He goes on to recap other such catastrophes, such as those associated with Vioxx and Celebrex. He questions whether the New England Journal of Medicine has been careful enough to avoid distorted results in its pages. And he notes that some doctors are now refusing to prescribe new drugs on the basis of such studies, because they are immediately skeptical of the findings.

He then comes back to the Avandia case, quoting the company as saying it acted responsibly, but then showing with documents that it didn't. A "risk-benefit" trial of Avandia was done not to assess the risks to patients, but the risks to the drug's reputation. When the study found problems, an internal email said that "these data should not see the light of day to anyone outside of GSK."

There is much more of this. I urge you to read the story to the end. 

My only complaint is the lily-livered headline on the piece: "As drug industry’s influence over research grows, so does the potential for bias." Whoriskey reports far more than "potential bias." He describes drug-industry corruption, manipulation, and collusion. The headline vastly undersells the story.

-Paul Raeburn