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HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  JUL / AUG 2025 45 379 Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S., Capitanio, J. P., & Cole, S. W. (2014). The neuroendocrinology of social isolation. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 733–767. 380 Qualter P, Brown SL, Munn P, Rotenberg KJ. (2010) Childhood loneliness as a predictor of adolescent depressive symptoms: A longitudinal study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(7), 803–811. an 8-year longitudinal study. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2010 Jun;19(6):493-501. 381 Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press. 382 Common Sense Media. (2021). The common sense census: Media use by tweens and teens, 2021. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense- census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens-2021. 383 Anderson, M., Faverio, M., & Park, E. (2024, December 12). Teens, social media and technology 2024. 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Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 39(4), 457-463. the potential population-level impact of diet, lifestyle, and environment as focal points for health, healing, and wellness. Corporate capture entails the systematic distortion of scientific literature, regulatory processes, clinical practices, and public discourse by pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, all aimed at maximizing profits. These mechanisms illustrate a trajectory from initial research to pervasive market saturation and narrative control. 1. Distorting Scientific Literature In medical school, doctors are taught high quality care is based on the scientific evidence presented in peer reviewed articles published in reputable medical journals. Embedded in this dictum are several assumptions: • That medical research is broadly focused on the most common and serious health challenges. • That journal articles include the most relevant findings on benefits and harms. • That the publication of articles in reputable journals is tantamount to an attestation and confirmation that the reports are faithfully distilled representations of original study data. • That peer reviewers are unbiased and have the biomedical, analytic, and scientific expertise to filter and curate study reports, assur- ing they are methodologically valid, presented fairly, and interpreted correctly. These assumptions are often incorrect. • In the United States, private industry funds five times as many clinical trials than all U.S. Federal agencies combined including the NIH. 479 Since 1999, 97% of the most frequently cited clinical trials received funding from industry 480 The number of citations is a mea- sure of papers’ impact, 481 suggesting nearly all of the most impactful clinical trials have been funded by industry. • Medical journals often do not have access to patient-level data from pharmaceutical research and therefore cannot vouch for the accuracy or completeness of the data they see. Industry data is firewalled, and companies generally allow no one other than employees to see it 482 —doctors and patients must therefore rely on the good faith of corporations to present an honest picture of their research. • Peer review, the gatekeeping attribute that defines medical journals, is ineffective and biased; reviewers at top journals are untrained, 483 ineffective when tested, 484 and many have financial ties to drug companies. 485 Drug companies, therefore, exercise corporate control over the research agenda, corporate control of the research findings seen by patients and doctors, and corporate influence over the review of those findings. These are the structural components comprising the cor- porate capture of medical information. Despite the broad inability of scientists or journalists to obtain access to original research data from pharmaceutical companies, there is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence supporting the conclusion that pharmaceutical industry dominance of research leads to distorted and misleading information routinely published in top journals, while journals and their content are routinely manipulated and controlled by industry money: • Pharmaceutical companies often craft studies and papers designed to favor their products. Evidence shows industry studies are much more likely to report favorable outcomes, 486 exaggerating benefits and underreporting harms. 487 • Editorials and opinion pieces in top journals are often written by biased, industry funded authors, and therefore disproportionately conclude the drugs in question are safe and effective. 488 • Medical journal economics: Medical journals rely for profitability on revenue from industry (advertising and reprints), thus journals

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