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Wyeth told to release documents on ghostwriting

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A federal judge has ordered the unsealing of thousands of pages of documents pertaining to the ghostwriting practices of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which is being sued over hormone-replacement drugs.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A federal judge has ordered the unsealing of thousands of pages of documents pertaining to the ghostwriting practices of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which is being sued over hormone-replacement drugs.

U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson ordered the papers unsealed Friday at the request of a medical journal and the New York Times. Plaintiffs' attorneys presented the papers earlier at trial to show that Wyeth routinely hired medical-writing firms to ghostwrite articles that appeared in seemingly objective medical journals but included only the name of a scientific researcher as the author.

The ruling came in a case that involves about 8,000 lawsuits that have been combined before Wilson. The lawsuits focus on whether Wyeth hormone-therapy drugs Prempro and Premarin, used to treat symptoms of menopause, have caused breast cancer in some women.

The New Jersey drugmaker, which has major operations in the Philadelphia area, had already turned over the documents, which it says concern about 40 articles in medical journals and other publications, to Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa).

Grassley sought them last year without a subpoena as part of a congressional investigation into drug-industry influence on doctors.

The documents were shown to jurors at trial but have otherwise been unavailable publicly.

Plaintiffs say ghostwriting is when a drug company conjures up the concept for an article that will counteract criticism of a drug or embellish its benefits, hires a professional writing company to draft a manuscript conveying the company's message, retains a physician to sign off as the author, and finds a publisher to unwittingly publish the work.

Drug firms disseminate their ghostwritten articles to their sales representatives, who present the articles to physicians as independent proof that the companies' drugs are safe and effective.

Wyeth attorney Stephen Urbanczyk acknowledged that the articles were part of a marketing effort. But he said that they were also fair, balanced, and scientific.

Wyeth, the world's No. 12 pharmaceutical company by sales, is being bought this fall by No. 1 drugmaker Pfizer.