The "corporate coauthor:" Ghostwriting in medical journals

(14 April 2005: VIDYYA MEDICAL NEWS SERVICE) -- In a commentary titled "The Corporate Coauthor" published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine on April 14, Adriane Fugh-Berman M.D., adjunct associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, recounts her experience of being asked to "author" a ghost-written article funded by a pharmaceutical company. Fugh-Berman declined, and penned a commentary about her experience for JGIM instead.

"The pharmaceutical industry relies on ghost-written publications in peer-reviewed journals as part of their marketing plans," said Fugh-Berman. Physicians rely on information in the medical literature to make treatment decisions, so hidden sponsorship of articlesâ€"and lectures at medical conferences is not only unethical, but can compromise patient care.

In her commentary, Dr. Fugh-Berman reports that she was approached by a medical education company working for a well-known pharmaceutical manufacturer. The company asked her to lend her name as "author" to a completed manuscript that reviewed herb-warfarin interactions. The pharmaceutical manufacturer was developing a competitor to warfarin and had apparently commissioned the article to highlight problems with warfarin.