Disclosure brouhaha

The New England Journal of Medicine will notify its readers in an upcoming issue about the relationship between Interneuron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and the authors of an editorial in the NEJM that puts the company's Redux obesity pill in a favorable light.

One of the authors, JoAnn Manson of Harvard Medical School, briefly was a paid consultant to IPIC. The company hired her to do further analysis of her nurses study, a long-term epidemiological study in nurses of a number of health factors. One of the conclusions of the study was that a 5 percent weight loss is correlated with significant improvements in health. Manson presented the data at the company's FDA panel meetings in September and November...