Public Justice E-lert: Wyeth Ghostwriting Evidence Now Available in Searchable Archive!

This I received in my inbox today and had to share it with you! :0) Enjoy!

Dear Wendy, Five weeks ago, I wrote you that Public Justice had unsealed and won public access to reams of evidence about Wyeth Pharmaceuticals "ghostwriting" medical journal articles promoting its own dangerous drugs. Two and a half weeks ago, I wrote you that all of the evidence had been posted on-line. Now that evidence is available in a searchable on-line database! The database was created by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with assistance from our client, PLoS Medicine, a medical journal published by the non-profit Public Library of Science. Today UCSF made all of the ghostwriting evidence that we unearthed available to the public for free in its Drug Industry Document Archive (DIDA). The addition of the Wyeth ghostwriting documents to DIDA enables researchers, students, journalists, or any other member of the public to investigate the ways in which ghostwriting threatens the integrity of medical science and to learn more about how the pharmaceutical industry secretly influences the messages conveyed by medical journal articles so that the practice of ghostwriting can be called to an end. The ghostwriting documents can be found by entering "ddu:2009*" without the quotation marks in the search box on DIDA's home page, which is available at http://dida.library.ucsf.edu. Any other search term (subject matter, author, organization, etc.) may be added in the search box along with "ddu:2009*" to focus the search. To read the District Court's order unsealing the ghostwriting evidence, click here. To read Public Justice's brief in support of PLoS Medicine's motion to intervene, click here. To read Public Justice's brief in support of PLoS Medicine's motion for access to the materials in this case, click here. To learn more about our Access to Justice Campaign, click here. Public Justice's legal team in the effort to unseal the documents included Goldberg, Waters & Kraus Fellow Amy Radon, Morgan "Chip" Welch of Welch and Kitchens, LLC in North Little Rock, Ark., and Public Justice Staff Attorney Leslie Brueckner. The New York Times, represented by Gerry Schulze of Eubanks, Baker & Schulze in Little Rock, Ark and George Freeman, Assistant General Counsel for the New York Times also challenged the secrecy in this case. And the plaintiffs' steering committee counsel -- led by James F. Szaller of Brown & Szaller in Cleveland, Ohio, and Erik B. Walker of Hissey, Kientz & Herron, P.L.L.C, in Houston, Texas -- were central to the efforts to unseal these documents. We thank them all. We thank you, too, for supporting Public Justice and our Access to Justice Campaign. To make a tax-deductible gift in support of this work, please click here. Thanks for your interest, dedication, and support. Keep fighting! - Arthur Arthur Bryant Executive Director Public Justice & the Public Justice Foundation email: abryant@publicjustice.net voice: 510-622-8150 web: http://www.publicjustice.net

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