Medical Publisher to Review Claim About Article’s Writer

December 22, 2008

Elsevier, a medical publisher, said Friday that it would investigate a senator’s recent allegation that one of its journals published an article on hormone replacement therapy that was improperly ghostwritten by a drug company promoting the product.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, had raised questions about the May 2003 “Editors’ Choice” article in Elsevier’s American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The article, signed by Dr. John Eden, an Australia academic, was among articles Mr. Grassley has cited that were favorable to drugs made by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth.

Mr. Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee who is investigating drug company influence on doctors, contends that Wyeth commissioned the articles and had them ghostwritten by a medical writing firm. Only after the articles were conceived and under way did the firm line up doctors to put their names on them, Mr. Grassley contends.

Read Article: New York Times

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