Drug firms pay doctors to sign 'independent' clinical studies

A British psychiatrist was doing research on possible dangers of antidepressant drugs when a representative of a drug manufacturer came to him with an offer of help. You're a busy guy, the company rep said. Here's some background on our product.

He e-mailed Dr. David Healy a finished 12-page review paper with graphs and footnotes, ready to present at an upcoming conference. And for convenience, Healy's name appeared as the sole author, even though the psychiatrist had never seen a single word of it before.

The drug company wanted its advertising to look like an independent study -- a "massive" scientific fakery that top medical journals condemn because it prevents doctors from getting the straight facts on medicines they prescribe.

Healy looked a gift horse in the mouth. Fearing the drug company was too easy on its own multimillion-dollar product, he did his own writing. But the ghostwritten paper appeared verbatim at the conference and in a psychiatric journal anyway -- under another doctor's name.

The drug industry is quietly paying "independent" doctors to sign their names to work they never did -- and keep their mouths shut.

"That of course is unbelievably corrupt and horrible," said Dr. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.