The Drug Industry Documents Archive (DIDA) is a digital archive of

pharmaceutical industry The pharmaceutical industry discovers, develops, produces, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure them, vaccinate them, or alleviate symptoms. ...

documents created and maintained by the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...

Library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and Center for Knowledge Management. DIDA is a part of the larger UCSF

Industry Documents Library The UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL) is a digital archive of internal tobacco, drug, food, chemical and fossil fuel corporate documents, acquired largely through litigation, which illustrate industry efforts to influence policies and regulation ...

which includes the

Truth Tobacco Industry Documents The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Truth Tobacco Industry Documents (formerly known as Legacy Tobacco Documents Library) is a digital archive of tobacco industry documents, funded by Truth Initiative and created and maintained by ...

. The archive contains documents about pharmaceutical industry

clinical trials Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietar ...

, publication of study results, pricing,

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

, relations with physicians and drug company involvement in continuing medical education. Most of the documents on DIDA were made public as a result of lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies

Parke-Davis Parke-Davis is a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Although Parke, Davis & Co. is no longer an independent corporation, it was once America's oldest and largest drug maker, and played an important role in medical history. In 1970 ...

, Warner-Lambert,

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfizer ...

, Merck & Co.,

Wyeth Wyeth, LLC was an American pharmaceutical company. The company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1860 as ''John Wyeth and Brother''. It was later known, in the early 1930s, as American Home Products, before being renamed to Wyeth in ...

and

Abbott Labs Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known d ...

, among others. DIDA was founded in 2005 with the support of a gift by Thomas Greene, the attorney for David Franklin, whistleblower in United States ex rel. Franklin v. Parke-Davis, the case from which the first documents in the archive originated. Researchers as well as students, journalists, and the general public, use the archive to investigate the ways pharmaceutical companies market their products. The

UCSF_Library The UCSF Library is the library of the University of California, San Francisco. It is one of the world's foremost libraries in the health sciences. Facilities The main branch (Kalmanovitz Library) is located at the Parnassus campus, with secondar ...

created this digital archive in an attempt to facilitate further research into the drug industry's practice of establishing close links with the medical community which has been shown to influence scientific research, drug approval, prescription practices, and ultimately, consumer health.

Collections

DIDA contains: *internal pharmaceutical company documents *correspondence between drug companies and physicians, researchers and educational institutions *regulatory and legal documents *court filings * depositions *expert reports *internal University documents Documents come from a variety of sources including: *Lawsuits against Merck & Co. regarding the marketing and use of

Vioxx Rofecoxib is a COX-2 selective nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). It was marketed by Merck & Co. to treat osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, acute pain conditions, migraine, and dysmenorrhea. Rofecoxib ...

*The landmark whistleblower case involving Neurontin (

gabapentin Gabapentin, sold under the brand name Neurontin among others, is an anticonvulsant medication primarily used to treat partial seizures and neuropathic pain. It is a first-line medication for the treatment of neuropathic pain caused by diabet ...

) and

off-label marketing Off-label use is the use of pharmaceutical drugs for an unapproved indication or in an unapproved age group, dosage, or route of administration. Both prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs (OTCs) can be used in off-label ways, although m ...

: ''United States of America ex rel. David Franklin vs. Parke-Davis, Division of Warner-Lambert/Pfizer'' *Investigations into

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...

and academic institutions by the

US Senate Finance Committee The United States Senate Committee on Finance (or, less formally, Senate Finance Committee) is a standing committee of the United States Senate. The Committee concerns itself with matters relating to taxation and other revenue measures generall ...

, headed by

Charles Grassley Charles Ernest Grassley (born September 17, 1933) is an American politician serving as the president pro tempore emeritus of the United States Senate, and the senior United States senator from Iowa, having held the seat since 1981. In 2022, he ...

(R-Iowa) *Investigations into the marketing of Vioxx to physicians by the

United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform The Committee on Oversight and Reform is the main investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. The committee's broad jurisdiction and legislative authority make it one of the most influential and powerful panels in the ...

, headed by

Henry A. Waxman Henry Arnold Waxman (born September 12, 1939) is an American politician who served as a United States House of Representatives, U.S. representative from California from 1975 to 2015. He is a member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat ...

Antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...

litigation involving Abbott Labs and their

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

drug

Norvir Ritonavir, sold under the brand name Norvir, is an antiretroviral drug used along with other medications to treat HIV/AIDS. This combination treatment is known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Ritonavir is a protease inhibitor a ...

*Lawsuits against

for the unethical promotion of the hormone replacement drug

Premarin Conjugated estrogens (CEs), or conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs), sold under the brand name Premarin among others, is an estrogen medication which is used in menopausal hormone therapy and for various other indications. It is a mixture of the ...

to women. Wyeth paid

medical ghostwriter Medical ghostwriters are employed by pharmaceutical companies and medical-device manufacturers to produce apparently independent manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and other communications. Physicians and other scientis ...

s to author journal articles about the drug.

References

External links

* Pharmaceutical industry American digital libraries Business and industry archives University of California, San Francisco {{UCSF

Collections

References

Further reading

External links