Pharma critics censored?

If you visited the Web site of the student-run Harvard Health Policy Review last week, you would be greeted with the words "Access forbidden!" On Monday, rumors soon began circulating on the pharmaceutical blogs Pharmagossip and Gooznews that a higher authority had pulled the plug on access after the journal published a scathing attack in September on three Harvard professors who edit the Journal of Health Economics and serve as faculty advisors to the Review. Not true, Review editor-in-chief Kevin Huang told The Scientist. While the dispute led one Harvard economist, Richard Frank, to resign from the journal's advisory board, the decision to temporarily take the Web site down was made by student editors. "When the article broke," says Huang, "I really had no idea what was going on." The article had been handled by a senior editor, and he wanted read it and discuss it with the group. "Now, when I look at the situation, it was really one-sided, and as a journal, we do want to be balanced." (The Review is not peer-reviewed.) The disputed article, "Ethical Standards for Healthcare Journal Editors: A Case Report and Recommendations," was written by Donald Light of the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey and Rebecca Warburton of the University of Victoria. It vividly describes their frustration trying to publish a critique of a 2003 estimate of drug development costs in the Journal of Health Economics. That estimate, published in the JHE by Joseph DiMasi at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development and two colleagues, put the price for bringing a new drug to market at $802 million. But Light and Warburton wanted to argue that DiMasi's team had worked off of pharmaceutical funding since the mid-1970s. Plus, they believed the team relied upon unverifiable data, and made questionable assumptions. Instead of publishing their letter, Light and Warburton allege, JHE editors defanged their critique and were overly generous with space granted for the original authors' response. Light and Warburton demanded an additional rejoinder, and only achieved their goals after threat of legal action. "The editors of JHE violated, in our opinion, almost every ethical standard established for editors," they write, "Yet they remain accountable to no one." Light told The Scientist he chose to vent his tale in the Review because "It seemed like an interesting journal and it was on their own turf." He felt his sharply worded critique was important because "The DiMasi results continue to be cited by journalists, policy-makers, congressional bills, and by reports by the Department of Commerce protecting the American market from lower drug prices in other countries."JHE editor Thomas McGuire told The Scientist that Light and Warburton's accusations are "far-fetched" and "bullshit," and says he was initially glad to accept the Light and Warburton article but wanted to scrub it of "personal attacks" against DiMasi.A major point of contention sprang from the journal's standard policy for handling conflicts-of-interest: Although the Tufts Center is openly funded with drug money, authors only need to disclose direct sources of project funding. McGuire felt that questioning DiMasi's "motives" and emphasizing this potential conflict was unfair in light of the journal policy. "[Light] has been quite personal in his attacks on the original authors and on me, and it was clear he was on a mission here," said McGuire, who does not accept money from drug companies.Light also asserted that McGuire gave DiMasi et al the "last word." But McGuire contended that is standard practice when authors respond to a published study. Even so, JHE editors felt that many of Light's claims were reasonable. The assertion that the drug data are unverifiable, for instance, had been noted by editor Richard Frank in an editorial that accompanied the original DiMasi et al paper. "I think there are some real conflicts-of-interest out there," Frank said, "I don't have a problem with trying to insist on disclosure." He added that he also made cuts to the DiMasi reply that he felt were personal.The JHE editors are in discussion with the Review about publishing a reply or posting their response online. As for Light, he appears to be spreading the Harvard censorship rumor. In an October 18th email sent to a colleague and obtained by The Scientist,Light wrote, "Someone, it seems -- the Harvard University Administration? -- has decided to protect its three full professors who censored critics of the pharmaceutical industry by blocking out all access to the case and the evidence."This morning (October 21), the Review posted a more heartening message on its Web site: "We have taken down our website temporarily to update it. We hope to have it up very shortly." --Brendan Borrell mail@the-scientist.comCorrection (October 22): In the original version of this story, we incorrectly referred to Merrill Goozner's blog as Goozner News. The blog's true name is Gooznews. The Scientist regrets the error.

Pharma critics censored?

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