Pharmaceutical companies influence drug trials
A number of studies show that results of clinical drug trials financed by pharmaceutical companies yield better results for company products more often than independent trials do. Moreover, pharmaceutical companies have been found to influence drug trials in various ways.
The German paper (click on the source link below) provides an overview of the findings of current, systematic studies on this topic. Publications retrieved from a systematic Medline search on this topic from 1 November 2002 to 16 December 2009 were independently evaluated and selected by two of the authors. Furthermore, this publication was supplemented by further studies found in its references section.
Published drug trials which were either financed by pharmaceutical companies or which contained an explicit financial conflict of interest, were found to yield advantageous results for the drug manufacturer more frequently than independently financed trials. The latter trails did not demonstrate any conflict of interests.
These results, from the drug trails funded by pharmaceutical companies, were also interpreted in a more propitious way than the independently financed trials. Furthermore, there was evidence that pharmaceutical companies influenced study protocols in a way that indicated more prosperity for themselves. The methodological quality of trials financed by pharmaceutical companies was not found to be any worse than that of trials financed in other ways.