As long as you live, you will never hear an article from news media contending that “America Runs On Duncan.” Why? Because the line is a marketing allegation created by the advertising company and designed to sell product.
Yet news media repeat medical claims from drug makers found in journals like they are news––which gives Pharma companies free advertising and can mislead consumers and patients.
The most recent example is the “news” that the shingles vaccine may lower the risk of dementia. What is the “source” of the news? Researchers affiliated with the University of Oxford, which boasts a five-year collaboration with GSK, the vaccine’s manufacturer! Who can say conflict of interest? The assertion may well prove to be true down the road, but right now, it is just a sales message.
Another example of marketing somehow elevated to “news” is the new benefits found with glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists, rapid-weight loss drugs like Ozempic (semaglutide)–specifically a reduction in addiction behaviors. (Not that the drugs need a sales boost!)
What is the source of the mental health benefit allegations? Research published in the British Journal of Pharmacology, one of whose authors received “an unrestricted research grant from [Ozempic maker] Novo Nordisk A/S to investigate the effects of GLP‐1 receptor stimulation on metabolic disturbances and weight gain in antipsychotic‐treated patients with schizophrenia.” No conflict there.
News that GLP-1 agonists protect against dementia/Alzheimer’s, presented at the 2024 Alzheimer’s conference, also poses problematical links. The investigator for the trials behind the “news,” Paul Edison, “collaborates closely with Novo Nordisk, GE Healthcare, Novartis, Piramal Life Sciences, and Astra Zeneca,” according to his faculty page at Imperial College.
Who remembers Xolair, an injected asthma drug manufactured by Genentech and Novartis, when the asthma “space” was especially lucrative? (See Advair, Singulair, Symbicort.) After its launch, whistleblowers approached me and revealed that they were instructed to illegally market the drug to children. Meanwhile, the drug was found to have a new benefit of treating urticaria (hives–itchy, raised bumps or welts on the skin) by, well researchers funded by Novartis.
Medical journals do not make it easy to root out these conflicts of interest. Many hide conflict of interest disclosures behind paywalls. Others confusingly refer to drug-maker-funded researchers only by their initials. Why? Still, other journals list government funding, such as from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), as if it were a conflict of interest designed to sell a drug in the way drug maker-funded research floating new drug benefits is.
While direct-to-consumer ads seem to dominate TV, they are for FDA-approved drug uses; it is illegal for drug makers to advertise a drug for non-FDA-approved use. (Though it is legal for doctors to prescribe a drug for a non-approved use or indication.) Moreover, procuring a new FDA approval for a drug takes years and millions in investment. That’s why floating a new benefit in medical journals that are picked up by news media is so tempting and common. It works.
Yet news media invariably pick up and publish medical stories—especially those describing a “new benefit” to an existing drug published in a medical journal—without even investigating their tautological source: the drug manufacturer! How is this different from writing a story whose lead-in is “America Runs On Duncan”?
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and the author of Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies and Born With a Junk Food Deficiency.
