Big Pharma Steps In To Tackle A Problem That Threatened To Rot The Foundation Of Medical Science.

So.....I knew this day was coming. I've known this day was coming for years. This is probably the least surprising bit of information I've ever written about. From the Health Blog of The Wall Street Journal:

A prominent Massachusetts anesthesiologist allegedly fabricated 21 medical studies involving major drugs....

...Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., has asked several anesthesiology journals to retract the studies, which appeared between 1996 and 2008, the WSJ reports. The hospital says its former chief of acute pain, Scott S. Reuben, faked data used in the studies.

Some of the studies reported favorable results from use of Pfizer’s Bextra and Merck’s Vioxx, both painkillers that have since been pulled from the market. Others offered good news about Pfizer’s pain drugs Lyrica and Celebrex and Wyeth’s antidepressant Effexor XR. Doctors said Reuben’s work was particularly influential in pain treatment and that they were shocked by the news.

Yeah. Shocked. Because the line from manipulating data you don't like to just making up your own data would be such a hard one to cross.

Not to worry though. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America is on top of things, and has taken bold, decisive, action to address this problem. No more free pens.

"It was the free Celebrex pen that started it all" Dr. Reuben said in an interview that took place only in my mind. "It was such a pretty blue and it clicked up and down way better than the cheap-ass Motrin pens I had to put up with when I was in med school. I grew to hate Motrin, and once I had that sweet, sweet Celebrex pen in my hand, I knew I must have revenge on Motrin and its crappy 80's pens"

So rest assured medical consumers of America, the fact that a doctor will never again have a pen emblazoned with the logo of Viagra, even though it will be legal for him to cash checks for tens of thousands of dollars from Pfizer for "consulting" work, will somehow keep researchers from ever making shit up again. After all, making shit up in drug studies is without a doubt the biggest problem the pharmaceutical industry could face. So I'm sure whatever they're doing, like banning free pens, is meant to address the problem of researchers making shit up.

Either that or the pen ban was meant as a distraction to take up space that would otherwise be used for stories about things like researchers who make shit up. One of the two.

Fuckers.