All Things Whistleblower: A GAP Blog

The Possible End of Wikileaks; Big-Pharma Produced Films

Wikileaks.org, a website on which whistleblowers may anonymously break stories of government and corporate transgressions, has gone offline and will remain so while it looks for funding. The home page featured a message saying that Wikileaks had received "hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks and other information pertaining to the Iraq war, China, the United Nations” and that it does not currently have the resources to release the documents. Wikileaks has featured thousands of sensitive documents regarding the September 11 attacks, Guantánamo Bay and the Church of Scientology, among others. Neil Gordon of the Project on Government Oversight commented on Wikileaks, saying: "We think there's nothing but good that can come from sites like Wikileaks. It provides places for whistleblowers to provide documents anonymously, which is often the only way you can uncover corruption."

In a controversial move, drug maker GlaxoSmithKline has decided to finance a documentary about eating habits in order to increase its sale of a weight loss drug they produce. While corporations often financially support films, as a rule they do not directly finance films with the hope of translating that support into profit. Some in the film industry are worried that the film will function more like a commercial for the weight loss drug and less like a documentary.

In the News Today

In public health news today, ABC News reports that despite talk of a push for greater drug safety, the number of drugs approved in 2009 was similar to the number approved in years before.

An article from Frank Chiropractic reported that drug research is full of conflicts of interest that threaten drug safety, using GAP’s 2009 report, The ABC’s of Drug Safety, as its main evidence. One conflict, for example, is that while drug companies continue to grow, the FDA continues to experience cutbacks, thus threatening regulation and oversight.

A physician and a community hospital in Minnesota agreed to pay almost $850,000 after another doctor blew the whistle on fraudulently billing of Medicare for "unreasonable and unnecessary" hospitalizations. Under a federal law, the whistleblower received $203,150. 

In other news, the New York Times featured an editorial by two members of the 9/11 Commission arguing that the government should examine the entire intelligence and airline safety system to determine if the failures that lead to 9/11 and the failed Christmas Day terror attempt are endemic or fixable. Obviously, despite the commission’s recommendations, major lapses are still apparent.

FDA: No Regulation of Online Drug Facts

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is on the second day of a two-day hearing to discuss the possible regulation of online marketing by drug companies. The FDA has strict rules on print and television advertising, but so far has not developed similar rules for internet marketing and social media.

Many at the hearing agreed much of the drug information available online is not adequately regulated, including on popular websites like Wikipedia and Drugs.com. Bias is also a problem, the hearing concluded, especially on sites like Twitter than limit the amount of language allowed.

The hearing comes after the FDA sent letters to more than a dozen drugmakers, including behemoths Eli Lilly and Merck, warning them that their online advertising was misleading because it did not contain warnings or risk information.

In The News

Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch, a GAP program, explains in this article how the combination of politics and the effects of Bush−era climate change denial are keeping the US from developing a concrete climate policy, and how the American climate policy debate treats global climate change as solely a domestic issue.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia sued a biotechnology firm and other drug suppliers over a scheme that paid doctors to sell their anemia drug. The suits were brought after a whistleblower claim was made in 2006 against the firm for illegal marketing practices. The suit alleges the firm provided kickbacks to doctors — such as sham consultancy agreements and posh weekend retreats — to induce them to purchase and prescribe the drug.

The climate-change bill that has been moving through the Senate is facing heavy criticism and daunting hurdles from Republicans and Democrats alike. With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, the bill is unlikely to pass unless some Republican lawmakers break with their party and support the legislation.

‘Expert’ Drug Studies Commonly Ghost-Written by Big Pharma

A doctor in the United Kingdom is being tried in front of a medical council for allowing his name to be put on a study on an osteoporosis drug when he did not have access to all the data on which the study’s conclusions were based. This practice of doctors “ghostwriting” medical studies, actually written by drug company employees, seems to be becoming more common.

The article mentions former GAP client Aubrey Blumsohn, a colleague of the accused doctor, Dr. Eastell. In his case, Dr. Blumsohn wanted the all of the data about Proctor & Gamble’s osteoporosis drug, Actonel, and asked the company for it. They refused. And they did so while publishing articles in his name. Blumsohn fought back, demanding his name be removed from the studies.

Researchers are supposed to be granted access to full data sets to reach informed conclusions. In 2001, an international coalition of the world’s leading medical journal editors called for all journal article authors to pledge that they had “full access” to drug study data. This was recommended in order to avoid data manipulation by corporate sponsors of product information. That editorial appears in the September 18, 2001 edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In 2004, P&G allowed Blumsohn to review, at one of its British facilities, what the company purported to be the actual data set. In reviewing the data, Blumsohn realized that numerous graphs (illustrating Actonel’s effectiveness in preventing bone fractures) omitted 40 percent of a data set, apparently manipulating results to suit P&G’s marketing objectives. P&G officials told Blumsohn that if these additional data were included in the results, the study would have favored a competitor’s drug –Merck’s Fosamax.

Unfortunately, its five years later, and things look the same.

HVP Drug Promoted by Medical Associations with Manufacturer's Money

Three medical associations promoted the HPV vaccine Gardasil using money that came directly from the manufacturer Merck, according to the Washington Post. Money given to the medical associations - the American College Health Association, the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology, and the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists - by Merck totaled almost $750,000.

The HPV vaccine is used for fighting a virus that causes cervical cancer. The marketing campaign was an effort to promote the safety of the drug without disclosing its risks. And, the campaigns done by the medical associations were eerily similar to those Merck produced.

“Dirty Tricks” by the Healthcare Industry

A former vice-president-turned-whistleblower from the healthcare giant Cigna says that the healthcare industry is using “dirty tricks” to form public opinion over the healthcare debate, according to CNN. Skilled with its use of language, Wendell Potter says the industry is ratcheting up its efforts to criticize many of the reform plans, including the government-run plan originally proposed by President Obama.

These dirty tricks include currying favor with members of Congress at the same time as they wage huge campaigns to undermine the efforts at reform, according to an article in Politico.

Many citizens have been riled up over the healthcare debate, taking their voices to town hall meetings with their members of Congress across the country. One Congresswoman says that the extreme dialogue on healthcare is not new; in fact it is an elevated form of the loud town halls of the 1990s when healthcare reform was originally proposed.

But Potter has now stated that the ‘buzzwords’ being used to counter and criticize health care legislation originate from industry spinmeisters, who are doing so, according to the CNN article, “in an effort to manipulate public opinion.”