MEDICAL SCIENCE OR MEDICAL MARKETING? Do you still believe that “medical science” is independent of the industry it reports on?!!

Leading vaccine-maker MERCK admits paying for the creation of a new medical journal in Australia to promote it’s products while appearing to be an independent journal.

Current Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet commented on this last year by saying: “Much of scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue…Science has taken a turn towards darkness.” — Dr Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of leading medical journal The Lancet.

This is called medical marketing NOT medical science. Don’t be fooled! Do the real research.

(Source: http://www.thelancet.com/…/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%296069…)

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Merck Paid for Medical ‘Journal’ Without Disclosure

Pharmaceutical companies routinely offer doctors reprints of articles from medical journals that are favorable to their products.

But news of a Merck-sponsored publication for doctors in Australia, that has come to light in a personal injury lawsuit there over Vioxx, has raised eyebrows in international medical publishing.

From 2002 through 2005, the Australian affiliate of Merck paid the Australian office of Elsevier, an academic publisher, to publish eight compilations of scientific articles under the title Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a spokesman for Elsevier said.

The Merck marketing compilation was unusual in that it looked like an independent peer-reviewed medical journal. It even called itself a “journal,” without indicating in any of the issues that Merck had paid for it.

Read full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/14vioxxside.html