PsychoCorp #4—Merck Published Fake Medical Journal

by Heidi Stevenson

5 May 2009

In its efforts to sell fatally flawed drugs, Merck produced and published a fake journal, the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. Elsevier was quite happy taking their money for printing it—and keeping quiet about it, too. Perhaps the marketing department at Merck should be given an award for its creativity...right before they and everyone involved is marched off to prison.

It was so blatantly self-serving that one must wonder why it didn't raise eyebrows in the medical world. The one thing that gives it the appearance of legitimacy is that Elsevier produced it. Two complete photocopies in PDF format are available for your perusal:

• Volume 2, Issue 1
• Volume 2, Issue 2

Articles called "Reviews" were generally brief, poorly documented, poorly or not referenced, and often didn't give authors' names, other than to specify "B&J", presumably meaning "Bone and Joint" as a reference to the fake journal. Most, if not all, of the studies were reprints or summaries of existing studies that had previously been printed in Elsevier journals.

In a written statement, Elsevier said that it does not now "consider a compilation of reprinted articles a 'Journal'." Later in the statement, Elsevier said, "It is worth noting that project in question was produced 6 years ago and disclosure protocols have evolved since 2003. Elsevier's current disclosure policies meet the rigor and requirements of the current publishing environment." Does this mean that Elsevier has only recently figured out that printing a fake medical journal might be dishonest or unethical? What does it mean about all the other journals they published before now? Why should we trust anything that they publish today? And why would they ever have considered printing such a blatantly fraudulent pseudo-journal, obviously designed as a marketing tool by the corporation that created it?

Elsevier's records must be in disarray, since they don't know how many issues were produced or distributed. They imply that such journals would normally have been distributed to doctors at no cost.

Professor Peter Brooks is listed as an Honorary Editorial Board member for the publication. He was on Merck's Asian Pacific and international advisory boards from the mid-90s until 2004, along with the boards of Amgen and Pfizer. He claims that, had he known the publication was, as he called it, a throwaway, he wouldn't have agreed to serve on the board. Then again, one must wonder why he'd have refused, since the job didn't require any work. He said he "didn't ever get [manuscripts] to review or anything like that. He knew he wouldn't, because the publication didn't accept original manuscripts. Brooks did say that he looked at one issue, and that, because it contained marketing studies and excerpts of papers from peer-reviewed journals, it wouldn't be fair to say it was "totally a marketing journal". Brooks acknowledged that he'd let his name be used for "a few [pharmaceutical] advertorials" (his term) about ten years ago.

To my eye, the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine looks like what it is—a marketing tool. It is obviously self-serving. The only ads are for Merck drugs, Fosamax and Vioxx. Most articles offer very limited information, are either poorly documented or not documented at all, often lack authors' names, and very often include information about a Merck drug. What strikes me as most worrisome about this story is that it's only now coming to light—and not because someone blew the whistle or even that a doctor was suspicious.

This travesty has come to light only because Graeme Peterson, who had suffered a heart attack while taking Vioxx—which, not incidentally, has killed tens of thousands of people via heart attacks—filed a lawsuit against Merck. During the trial just over a week ago, a member of the World Association of Medical Editors, George Jelinek, testified that he'd reviewed four issues of the fake journal. He said that an "average reader", who would presumably be a doctor, might mistake it for a journal, but that close inspection, "enabled me to determine that the journal was not, in fact, a peer-reviewed medical journal, but instead a marketing publication for MSDA [Merck]."

Here's the upshot: The two drugs Merck was pushing with these fraudulent publications were Fosamax, a drug sold for osteoporosis, and Vioxx, sold primarily for back pain. Vioxx has since been pulled off the market. It killed tens of thousands of people with heart disease. Fosamax is actually known to cause the disease it's supposed to prevent. One must wonder: How many doctors were duped? How many doctors didn't bother to look at their references with a critical eye? How many doctors suspected, but didn't speak up? And how many people were harmed and killed because of this fraud?

People involved should go to prison for this. Anyone involved in any other profession who knowingly takes part in an act that a reasonable person could see might harm or kill someone can go to prison for it. Everyone who allowed his name to be used on the Editorial Board or as a principal of the phony journal, along with all the marketing people who cooked up the idea, are guilty of fraud. When one considers that thousands of people have been maimed and killed by the drugs promoted through this vehicle, it becomes clear that fraud isn't an adequate term. The people who perpetrated this fraud should all be removed from society so they can't harm anyone else. They are guilty of negligent homicide.