Medical journals are corrupted by dependence on drug companies

Medical journals are no more than “an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies” because a large proportion of their revenue comes from drug advertisements and reprints of company funded trials, claims former BMJ editor, Richard Smith.

Dr Smith argues that although medical journals make a sizeable income from drug advertisements this is the least of their “corrupting form of dependence” on the industry since the advertisements are “there for all to see and criticize” (PLoS Medicine 2005;2:e138; www.plosmedicine.org, doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138).

Dr Smith's strongest criticism is levelled at the fact that journals publish …