Staff at STM publisher Elsevier reportedly e-mailed pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck, asking it to select the content it wanted published about its anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx in the Elsevier journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. This has been revealed by documents tendered to a US Federal Court for a class action suit.
Elsevier has also reportedly admitted that the journal is a 'single sponsored publication' where most of the content is selected by Merck with some input from Elsevier. The publisher has expressed embarrassment over its role and admitted to not meeting disclosure norms.
According to media reports, the petitioner in the class action has called the journal a fake, and a marketing exercise designed to promote Vioxx. It has also been told at the court that Merck included names of certain arthritis experts on the editorial board of the journal without giving them prior information or asking them for their consent.
Lead plaintiff Graeme Peterson, on behalf of several other Australians, is suing Merck and its Australian subsidiary Merck, Sharp & Dohme for compensation. He alleges that the company covered up the increased risk of cardiovascular problems associated with the drug much before it withdrew it in September 2004. Merck, however, claims that there is no definitive scientific proof Vioxx caused heart attacks and that it had acted responsibly.
E-mail communications between Merck's Australian marketing staff and 'account managers' from Elsevier Australia and Excerpta Medica Communications, a subsidiary of Elsevier, have allegedly revealed how they colluded over content in the journal.
The correspondence also details the response to complaints by angry medical experts whose names were listed on the journal's editorial board without their knowledge or consent.
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