A medical Madoff?

Zoomer | April 3rd, 2009

We’ve been hearing a lot about corruption lately whether it’s on Wall Street or from cyber bugs or scam artists who steal our money, our privacy and even our identities. And now there’s news of fraud on another front.

In what has been described as the longest and most wide-ranging case of scientific fraud, Dr. Scott Reuben, a renowned Massachusetts anesthesiologist, has been accused of fabricating data (and in some cases even inventing patients) from 1996 to 2008 in 21 published studies. The fraud has rocked the medical community with Scientific American calling Reuben the medical equivalent of Bernie Madoff, the former NASDAQ chairman who is awaiting sentencing for his admitted $65-billion fraud.

Reuben, who is currently on leave from the Baystate Medical Center (located on one of the campuses of Tufts University School of Medicine), studied the use of several drugs to relieve pain and speed recovery after surgery. The hospital has since asked the journals who had published Reuben’s work to retract the studies, some of which reported favorable results from Pfizer Inc.’s Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica and Merck & Co. Inc.’s Vioxx. His research also claimed Wyeth’s antidepressant Effexor could be used as a painkiller.

“Dr. Reuben deeply regrets that this happened,” his attorney, Ingrid Martin, told the Associated Press. “Dr. Reuben cooperated fully with the peer review committee. There were extenuating circumstances that the committee fairly and justly considered.”

And while Reuben’s research was not included with the clinical trials that led the US Food and Drug Administration to approve Celebrex and Lyrica, his work was considered widely influential on how doctors treat surgery patients for pain.

“Doctors have been using (his) findings very widely,” said Dr. Steven Shafer, editor of Anesthesia and Analgesia. “His findings had a huge impact on the field.”

As a result of Reuben’s fabricated studies, Shafer said researchers would need to re-examine the literature and may be forced to repeat clinical trials.

Critics condemn ‘marketing studies’

According to media reports, Pfizer gave Reuben five research grants between 2002 and 2007, and he was also a paid member of the company’s speakers bureau, giving talks about Pfizer drugs to colleagues.

Pfizer said in a statement that it was not involved in the conduct of any of these independent studies or in the interpretation or publication of the study results.

“Independent clinical research advances disease treatments and improves the lives of patients,” Raymond F. Kerins Jr., a Pfizer spokesman, told The New York Times. “As part of such research, we count on independent researchers to be truthful and motivated by a desire to advance care for patients. It is very disappointing to learn about Dr. Scott Reuben’s alleged actions.”

Pharmaceutical companies routinely hire physicians to conduct studies of drugs that are already approved. Companies say these studies are legitimate preliminary investigations of new uses for their products. But critics allege that drug companies often underwrite studies of little scientific merit in hopes of persuading doctors to prescribe the medicines more often.

As a result of the Reuben fraud, some critics are calling for a crackdown on the use of small scientific studies for ‘marketing purposes’.

Sources: The Associated Press; The New York Times; Scientific American.

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