Drug Company Uses Fake Journal to Sell Its Drugs

In the past, I've told you stories of alternative doctors who ran afoul of the law simply because they didn't follow conventional medicine's drug mandate. In our culture, drugs rule. But you already know that. You know that when you take a drug, your life is in danger. What you may not know is that when you don't take a drug, your integrative physician's medical license is in danger.

That's how controlling the drug companies are. And they're very good at what they do. But the documents uncovered in an Australian lawsuit have revealed activities that would shock even hardened advocates of Big Pharma.

These documents say that Merck created a fake "peer-reviewed" journal. Its purpose? To present favorable data on its killer drugs Fosamax and Vioxx.

Elsevier is one of the world's biggest publishers of medical journals. Merck reportedly paid this company to publish the phony journal, The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, without disclosing the company's sponsorship.

George Jelinek is an Australian physician and longtime member of the World Association of Medical Editors. He reviewed four issues of the journal that Elsevier published in 2003-4. He testified that the "average reader" (a doctor) would probably mistake the publication for a genuine peer-reviewed medical journal. Only close inspection combined with his expertise enabled him to determine that the journal was really a marketing publication for Merck.

In two issues, of 50 articles that he read, 16 referred to Fosamax and nine to Vioxx. All presented positive views. Half of all the articles were merely promotions for the petrochemicals.

Now please consider this. Imagine that your doctor prescribed you these drugs after reading these articles. Let's say you got a stroke from Vioxx, and that you got bone death from Fosamax. Well, the medical board would turn the other cheek. It would find that your doctor was practicing the "standard of practice," which is based on published reports. It would not expect him to be smart enough to know that the journal was bought and paid for, even if you died as a result. And nothing would happen to the drug company.

It is a crazy world we live in, when a doctor can read false propaganda from Big Pharma, and give you something that kills you, and no one is held responsible. If your conventional doctor gives you a prescription, you have to do your own research and consult your integrative physician to determine if it's right for you. Don't rely on your conventional doctor to give you unbiased information. He may not know his advice is based on faulty information.