…It doesn’t exist yet but it can, if we write it.
I think a really interesting article can be written for the general public about big pharma’s undue influence on Wikipeida. We can use finasteride as a concrete example but we would be arguing about pharma trying to suppress information and manipulate public opinion in general. In the meantime, we will get our PFS message across.
There is definitely an information war that the pharma industry is waging on Wikipedia, and what’s most striking is Wikipedia’s apparent collusion with pharma’s attempts to suppress the truth which is very evident in the case of finasteride. (it would be interesting to know if any pharmaceutical companies make charitable contributions to Wikipedia).
I have read the Wikipedia discussion pages on finasteride and I know for example that Prof. Belknap, who has published academic papers on the side effects of finasteride, and who was trying to contribute objective and critical information to the finasteride article, was banned from Wikipedia.
There are a lot more facts in this story. People have been trying to put up a Wikipedia article on PFS for at least 10 years but it always gets deleted. 20 years after the evidence for PFS first emerged and after the overwhelming evidence of tens of scientific publications at present, Wikipedia editors still refer to PFS a “conspiracy theory”.
It seems to me there is a bigger issue here as the Wikipedia case of information suppression can be turned into a larger story on the ways corruption and special interests influence society in the modern age. Such an article will have appeal to the general public and finasteride will be just one example of a larger phenomenon.
The importance of such an article cannot be overstated. Most people are completely unaware that Wikipedia can be not only a biased source of information influenced by special interests but also a weapon against the public interest.
Brooks Witzke has written a petition to the FDA to remove Finasteride from the market, in which he makes strong arguments on this topic. Relevant excerpt is below. I have corresponded with him and I know he has more details about this.
“Despite the literature documenting this horrible condition, efforts to make the public aware of this condition are thwarted by the very perpetrators that caused it. PFS at one time had its own webpage on Wikipedia, which was linked to the page for Finasteride. This page was constructed by members of the Post Finasteride Syndrome Foundation to provide warnings to patients and prevent the occurrence of PFS in other victims. Members of the pharmaceutical industry each time had the Post Finasteride Syndrome page removed from Wikipedia. (Wikipedia Archives, 2017). The same thing happened with the Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) page on Wikipedia, again its removal was at the hands of pharmaceutical companies. (Healy, 2014). Despite having multiple correspondences with Wikipedia staff, including a formal complaint, Wikipedia staff offered no explanation for how or why the page was permitted to be removed, or for that matter, what great and powerful force was able to influence its removal. The only explanation I received from Wikipedia was “try putting the page back up with different citations.” Since this time, the page was re-constructed (by medical doctors) and removed multiple times without explanation. (Wikipedia Archives, 2017). Wikipedia would later contact me and tell me that the one sentence line—at the very end of the adverse effects section—which states “[i]t has been reported that in a subset of men, these adverse sexual side effects may persist even after discontinuation of finasteride or dutasteride” is sufficient enough to provide an adequate warning for an entirely separate; debilitating disease caused by the drug.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323738200_FDA_Petition_to_Remove_Finasteride_From_United_States_Drug_Market
So here is my question to all of you: Can we find someone who writes really well to write such an article? We can all help with compiling information, sources, ideas, etc. I would volunteer to do it but I am not a good writer, especially in English. It needs to be really top-notch - The Atlantic kind of quality.
What do you guys think?