STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has issued a public statement over its role in the marketing of the Vioxx anti-arthritis drug. The publisher acknowledged that it had failed to meet its disclosure standards in producing a publication sponsored by US pharmaceutical group Merck.
In a statement issued by the company, Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier's Health Sciences Division, has said that the global publisher is conducting an internal review but believe this was an isolated practice from a past period in time. He further stated that the company will continue to partner with all scientists and clinical investigators, including those in the pharmaceutical industry, to help communicate the findings of high-quality, peer-reviewed medical research.
Elsevier produced several issues of a magazine called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine between 2003 and 2005. The magazine carried articles promoting Merck products Fosamax and Vioxx. The company, however, failed to state that the publication was sponsored by Merck. Elsevier is part of the Reed Elsevier group, which produces the Lancet, the medical journal that has accused Merck of selling Vioxx after it became aware of the drug's heart risks.
Merck has been a subject of much controversy as regards disclosure of cardiovascular events linked to Vioxx. In 2008, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that Merck regularly prepared scientific studies by itself or farmed them out to medical publishing companies. According to the report, the company hired research scientists to claim authorship, even if their involvement was minimal. The reports frequently were penned by ghostwriters and some - on Vioxx studies - minimised the risk of death, the report claimed.
Financial ties between doctors, medical researchers and the drug industry is a known fact in the industry. Highly regarded doctors and researchers have also faced a great deal of criticism because of their financial arrangements with pharmaceutical companies. The latest Elsevier incident is seen to mark a fresh twist in a long debated controversy on how pharma companies influence academic journals by paying for large numbers of reprints of articles favourable to their drugs for distribution to doctors.
Merck described the publication as a 'complimentary journal' comprising articles on its drugs from peer-reviewed publications, which mentioned its funding for the studies and a 'hypothetical cardiovascular risk' associated with Vioxx.
