Big Medicine shouldn't remind us of Big Tobacco

Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth paid a writer and a doctor to write favorable reviews of their products and put those stories in magazines that DOCTORS read. They did this 26 times.

Their products – hormone replacement therapy - have been linked to cancer.

Would this happen in socialized medicine?

WSJ Health Blog, that place of refuge for big business: This is the latest in a string of revelations about drug companies’ practice of " target="_blank"">paying ghostwriters to put together articles.

Wyeth can afford to lie to the public: Wyeth reported significantly higher second-quarter earnings in July, its bottom-line helped by cost reductions and strong sales of its pediatric vaccine Prevnar and rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel.

Can you trust them with your children or your parents – or yourself?If they pay a doctor to lie and pay a write to do a favorable review, would they pay a doctor to lie and pay a research to conduct a favorable study to test? Would they pay others to lie?

Wyeth's hormone replacement drugs, Premarin and Prempro, made nearly $2 billion in 2001. Sales of all the hormone drugs fell after a U.S. government study was halted in 2002 when researchers found the drugs increased the risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and dementia.

The Madison, N.J.-based drugmaker said it earned $5.7 billion IN THREE MONTHSm in July 2009.

Wyeth contacted reporters before the latest cancer-study was released in June in order try to put a positive spin on the cancer news by noting the European market is dominated by a different hormone replacement therapy.

Scientists studied 900,000 women ages 50 to 79, the scientists found 140 extra cases of ovarian cancer linked to hormone treatment over eight years.

Let me ask you - do you play the lottery?

Because if you took that drug, that translates to much better odds than 1 in a million - about 100 in a millions betters odds than winning the lottery. Because you took your medicine.

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