We recently reported about a paper published in JAMA titled Guest Authorship and Ghostwriting in Publications Related to Rofecoxib. One of the co-authors, we discovered through some simple research is someone who’s made a good living as an expert witness suing drug companies.
In fact, he’s been so devoted to that cause that according to a New York Judge he arranged to steal documents under sealed court order and leak them to the New York Times Doctor Who Leaked Documents (September 8, 2007). He ended up being soundly chastised by a federal judge, and he was required by that judge to pay the company he stole the documents from, Eli Lilly & Co., $100,000, the judge called these actions "reprehensible".
This co-author was Dr. David Egilman, a professor at Brown University in community health, (as noted on his website, he has no research or clinical trial experience to earn a place publishing in JAMA). He has according to one Texas newspaper, earned millions testifying as an expert witness in about 100 personal injury trials; he’s been deposed hundreds of times – generally for the plaintiffs.
In fact, he may have a particular interest in derailing a Merck Vioxx settlement, which the publication of the critical report in JAMA at this time might contribute to. He is a serial plaintiff witness in the Merck Vioxx trials and JAMA should have seen these as serious conflict of interest, an even greater conflict of interest than any of the alleged ghost writers he criticized.
It’s possible the personal stakes for the authors of the JAMA piece are enormous. After all, the longer the case goes on, the bigger the fees for the attorneys involved – and their expert witnesses!
Of course, we don’t know the real amount of Dr. Egilman’s earnings – that’s confidential!
In the JAMA editorial accompanying the paper, Katherine DeAngelis’s, MD Editor of JAMA stated “"To maintain a healthy distance from industry influence, professional organizations and providers of continuing medical education courses should not condone or tolerate for-profit companies having any input into the content of educational materials or providing funding or sponsorship for medical education programs."
Perhaps this would be a more appropriate editorial “To maintain a healthy distance from being duped by trial lawyers JAMA should not condone or tolerate for-profit plaintiff witnesses having any input into the content or trial attorneys providing funding or sponsorship for “peer reviewed” papers, which condemn those they are suing, especially if the author has leaked confidential information to the press been chastised by judges and forced to pay six figure fines.
I challenge the board of JAMA to investigate the “Peer Review” process for this series of articles and at the very least chastise their editor for poor author checking (a simple Google search of David Egilman and Merck and this only scratches the surface)
For more about Doctor Egilman and his exploits “Without Fear or Favor” or simply type his name on Google, it is amazing what you will find…