Two highly damaging reports involving world's two top pharmaceutical companies were published in the international media last week. The one about Pfizer Inc said that Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer's speakers' bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals. Dr. Reuben reported to have accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, published in a medical journal, Anesthesia & Analgesia, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as "proof" that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. But the fact is that for this study, no patients were ever enrolled and in short, he faked the entire study and got it published. Following the detection of Dr. Reuben's faked studies, the medical journal was forced to retract 10 other "scientific" papers authored by Reuben. The Day of London reports that 21 articles written by Dr. Reuben that appeared in medical journals have apparently been fabricated, too, and must be retracted. After being caught fabricating research for the top companies, Dr. Reuben reportedly signed a plea agreement that will require him to return $420,000 that he received from drug companies. He also faces up to a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

The other report is about GlaxoSmithKline. A 334-page report, released by the US Senate Finance Committee, says that GSK, maker of the diabetes drug Avandia, knew the drug was linked to tens of thousands of heart attacks but went out of its way to hide this information from the public. The report accuses the US FDA of betraying the public trust by intentionally dismissing the safety concerns found by the agency's own scientists. The report further says that Big Pharma's drugs "put public safety at risk because the FDA has been too cozy with drug makers and has been regularly outmaneuvered by companies that have a financial interest in downplaying or under-exploring potential safety risks." Global sales of Avandia placed at $3.2 billion in 2006. According to a statistical analysis in the report, if all the diabetics currently taking Avandia were put on a "safer" drug, it would avert 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure every month in the US alone. Presently, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still taking this drug, and hundreds may continue to die each month as a result, the report estimates. The drug is being still sold in the US market as the FDA decided to allow its marketing. Media reports on these two powerful pharmaceutical companies seriously erode credibility of theirs and the global pharmaceutical industry itself in the public mind. One tend to believe then that fraudulent research is widespread among the MNCs dealing in modern medicine. The pharmaceutical industry cannot probably operate without it as it has to run the profit machine for its shareholders.