Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

CYBX continues to be an embarrass-
ment to the medical-device industry.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115654102420045878.html

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Journal Editor Steps Down Over Undisclosed Ties to CYBX

By DAVID ARMSTRONG
August 28, 2006

BOSTON -- The editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Charles Nemeroff, is stepping down after he wrote a favorable review of a new device for treating depression that didn't disclose his financial ties to the device's maker.

The journal, which carried the article, has published a correction citing Dr. Nemeroff's ties to the device maker and those of the article's other eight authors. In addition to Dr. Nemeroff, seven of the authors were academics who serve as consultants to the maker of the device, and one was an employee of the company, Cyberonics Inc., of Houston. The authors' relationships to Cyberonics were reported in The Wall Street Journal last month.

Dr. Nemeroff, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, couldn't be reached for comment.

In an email Friday, the owner of the medical journal said Dr. Nemeroff had decided to step down as editor. The email said his decision was "in part, based on the recent adverse publicity to the journal." The medical journal is published by the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, a medical society of scientists and physicians who study the brain and behavior.

Last month, the journal published a review in which it said the Cyberonics treatment, in which a small device is implanted in the chest to deliver mild electrical pulses to the vagus nerve in the neck, is "a promising and well-tolerated intervention that is effective in a subset of patients with treatment-resistant depression." [LOL]
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