Ghost Writers

Drug companies have once again fallen foul of their own greed.

Merck, the company that makes amongst other things the new Hiv-1 Integrase Inhibitor, Isentress (Raltegravir), has been under scrutiny by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It seems to be a regular occurence that Research Studies be written, not by researchers, but ghost-written by the Drug Companies themselves and signed much later by an appropriate Academic Researcher.

The implication in the article from the JAMA is that this practice is widespread within the Pharmaceutical community.

So how much of this research is done by independant researchers?

How safe are the drugs?

Source: New York Times

Isentress / Raltegravir

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New HIV Drug Merits Quick Approval
The Associated Press

(Washington) An experimental HIV drug from Merck & Co. Inc. should be quickly approved for use by patients running out of treatment options, federal advisers recommended Wednesday.

The panel of outside experts agreed unanimously that available data support accelerated approval of Isentress, also known as raltegravir, by the Food and Drug Administration.

If approved, Isentress would be the first in a new class of anti-retroviral drugs called integrase inhibitors.

The Merck drug targets integrase, one of three enzymes used by the virus to replicate and infect cells. The FDA previously has approved drugs that target the two other enzymes, protease and reverse transcriptase.

Isentress is meant to be used as part of a "cocktail" of drugs to fight HIV in patients who have developed a resistance to older medications.

Last month, the FDA approved another novel HIV drug, Pfizer Inc.'s Selzentry. That drug is the first that works by blocking a crucial doorway, called the CCR5 receptor, that HIV often uses to enter white blood cells.
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