Did researchers get paid big bucks to push dangerous Avandia?
There’s more bad news in the Avandia mess. As if it’s not enough that the drug has been strongly tied to heart health risks. Or that Glaxo maybe knew about the problems while continuing to push their diabetes “miracle.” Now we have to add researchers’ financial connections to the mix…

The Avandia story just keeps getting shadier.

Earlier this month, I told you about the push from FDA reviewers to remove the top-selling diabetes drug from the market (“Reviewers Say Get Rid of Avandia,” 3/4/2010). The reasons were nothing new to e-Tips and Nutrition & Healing readers — there’s too strong a link between heart problems and Avandia.

And, of course, there was the cover-up news — the allegations that GlaxoSmithKline knew about the serious health risks for years. Allegations based on a review of 250,000 documents.

You’d think it couldn’t get worse — but it just did. And it’s sad to say, I’m not terribly surprised by where the story has gone.

A new review from the Mayo Clinic shows that most researchers who reported positive results in numerous studies of Avandia had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.

The mainstream press is quick to add that it’s “not clear” whether or not these financial ties directly lead to supportive research of drugs.

Now, that’s being just a little generous, don’t you think? There’s a phrase for this, and it’s called being “paid off.”

The authors of the review looked at more than 200 studies, and found that “there was a clear and strong link between the orientation of authors’ expressed views on the rosiglitazone controversy and their financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies.”

A full 94% of the researchers who defended Avandia had ties to drug companies, and almost half of the study authors had financial ties that demonstrated a conflict of interest. Even worse — a quarter of those researchers didn’t disclose those conflicts of interests.

The Mayo Clinic reviewers concluded that it was almost three to four times more likely that someone with a relationship with Big Pharma had a positive opinion of Avandia.

Yeah, if that doesn’t smack of being paid off, I don’t know what does.

The Mayo Clinic reviewers said it’s not clear whether financial ties influence a researcher’s opinion or whether drug companies seek out researchers who already have a favorable opinion of a given drug and choose to fund their work.

Either way, it’s pretty disturbing. No matter how Big Pharma tries to spin it, the best research is independent research. You can’t deny that money equals influence. Or the fact that, if there’s a connection that can be abused, Big Pharma’s going to abuse it.

It’s time to change the way research is conducted. We have to stop letting Big Pharma pay for seals of approval from the scientific community.

Sources:
“Avandia Researchers’ Financial Ties Questioned,” Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com)
“Many Avandia defenders have drug co. ties: study,” Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com)