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Record W20432676 · doi:10.15173/m.v1i6.647

Big Pharma: In Whose Best Interest?

2012· article· en· W20432676 on OpenAlexaffvenue
Shama Sud

Bibliographic record

VenueThe Meducator · 2012
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEconomics, Econometrics and Finance
TopicPharmaceutical Economics and Policy
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsPeer reviewMedicinePolitical scienceLaw

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The recent recall of the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx was a defining moment in the history of modern medicine.It has convincingly and dramatically driven home the point that for pharmaceuticals, maximizing profits takes priority over public interest.Furthermore, it highlights the failure of the regulatory system to protect the public.Somewhere along the course of developments in medical treatments and technology, the priorities of the "big pharma" and their consumers they are marketing to seem to have diverged.From January 1st, 1994 to April 30, 2004, 2.3% of all new molecular entities approved by the FDA were recalled due to an intrinsic property of the drug that caused harmful side effects (FDA, 2004).While this figure may appear to be small, adverse side effects of over-the-counter and prescription drugs are responsible for the death of 100,000 Americans and severe injury of another 2.1 million every year, not including illness due to drug abuse or prescribing errors (CNN, 1998).Severe drug-induced reactions have been ranked sixth among the leading causes of death in the United States (CNN, 1998).A definite idea of whom a drug is suitable for, as well as its potential side effects, should be determined before consumers begin to use it.From a patient's perspective, this makes the most sense.However, it would appear as though the big pharma is not taking this as seriously as patients are.This article will consider three cases that demonstrate the need for greater accountability in the drug industry.The effect that a severe lack of information can have in terms of the safety and effectiveness of drugs first became evident with the Thalidomide tragedy.Thalidomide was a drugthatwasfirstputontothemarketin1957asatreatment for morning sickness in pregnant women (Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada, 2003).Unfortunately, its beneficial effects were outweighed by negative effects.The drug not only inhibited proper growth of the fetus leading to devastating birth defects such as blindness, deafness, cleft palate, disfigurement, and phocomelia in thousands of children around the world, but it was also responsible for the deaths of a staggering number of babies (Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada, 2003).One would assume 10

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.019
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.077
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Commentary · Consensus signal: Commentary
Teacher disagreement score0.025
Threshold uncertainty score0.101

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0190.077
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.003
Science and technology studies0.0040.010
Scholarly communication0.0240.029
Open science0.0020.005
Research integrity0.0240.020
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0250.010

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.198
GPT teacher head0.342
Teacher spread0.144 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreCommentary

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2012
Admission routes2
Has abstractno

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