February 14, 2006

Looking for conflicts of interest

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The Center for Science in the Public Interest offers a newsletter called âIntegrity in Science Watch.â?

You can subscribe by writing to: science@cspinet.org.

Last weekâs newsletter had this item:

New York Times Fails To Disclose Researcher’s Ties to Antidepressant Makers

A new study published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine showed an increased incidence of lung disease in children born from pregnant women taking antidepressants like Paxil, Prozac, Celexa and Zoloft. While the New York Times report quoted a Food and Drug Administration official calling the results “very worrisome,” it countered with study co-author Christine Chambers of the University of California at San Diego, who downplayed the risks. “We don’t know for certain that the drugs actually caused persistent pulmonary hypertension, and that if they did, the risk is still low, about one in a hundred,” she said. The Times failed to report that Chambers and her co-authors have numerous ties to pharmaceutical firms, including Barr Laboratories, Par Pharmaceutical, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sandoz, and GlaxoSmithKline, all of which make at least one of the drugs in the test.

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