Saturday, December 4, 2010

Adventures in Ghostwriting: Big Pharma’s Very Own Textbook

FairWarning.org, Nov. 30, 2010

A major drug maker and its consultants provided substantial content for a medical text that was later credited to a pair of prominent physicians, The New York Times reports.

The book–”Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care”– was published in 1999, and ostensibly co-authored by Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, currently chairman of psychiatry at the University of Miami medical school, and Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, who until last year was chairman of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Its purpose was to advise family doctors on the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

“To ghostwrite an entire textbook is a new level of chutzpah,” Dr. David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told the Times. “I’ve never heard of that before. It takes your breath away.”

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