Medical schools, NIH should ban all ghostwriting, says Boston Globe editorial

08/25/2009

With new revelations of medical ghostwriting that have emerged from Paxil marketing court cases and pressure on the National Institutes of Health to clamp down on the practice, the Boston Globe says there's no room for the deceptive marketing tactic in medicine. "The positive buzz that ghostwritten articles can create around a new medication is as manufactured as the gauzy TV ads showing the benefits of painkillers or acid-reflux drugs," writes the Globe, and holds up local medical schools that have banned the practice in code.

"The National Institutes of Health, medical schools, journals, and professional organizations all have a role to play in making ghostwriting a clear violation of their ethical codes," the Globe continues. "Hired-gun wordsmiths have no place in the important process of physicians and patients informing themselves about new treatments."

For more on how to address the problem of medical ghostwriting, check out the RxP toolkits on ghostwriting and speakers bureaus.