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December 19, 2005
Pharma Marketing No Threat?
An editor at a medical education company says the WSJ article I blogged about last week probably won't hurt the freelance medical ghostwriter quoted in the story. The editor doesn't seem to believe that industry marketing, at least marketing from medical education companies, is a threat to, well, anything.
"There's really not that much they can do to cook the data, since the study reports are already on file with the FDA. If any cooking is going on, it's before the FDA filing, and the medical writers for those are employed at the pharma companies.
"It's true [pharma companies] want their marketing messages in the articles, but marketing messages tend to be things like 'steroid-sparing' or 'low incidence of injection-site events.' Not really too exciting."
Dullness take my hand. At least there's real money exchanged. Unlike a big chunk of the dubious gigs available on Craig's List ("Put as much of your work on the JuiceCaster Network as you wish on any subject you want – for free"), medical companies don't expect writers to take their pay primarily in glory.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at December 19, 2005 09:42 PM