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  3. The multibillion-dollar international pharmaceutical industry has been accused of manipulating the results of drug trials for fi

The multibillion-dollar international pharmaceutical industry has been accused of manipulating the results of drug trials for fi

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问题    The multibillion-dollar international pharmaceutical industry has been accused of manipulating the results of drug trials for financial gain and withholding information that could expose patients to possible harm.
   The stranglehold the industry has on research is causing increasing alarm in medical circles as evidence emerges of biased results, under-reporting and selective publication driven by a market worth more than 10 billion pounds in Britain alone.
   The industry has sponsored the trials of new drugs which have held out great promise for patients with cancer, heart disease, mental health problems and other illnesses.
   But the tests on the same drugs in independent trials paid for by non-profit organizations — governments, medical institutions or charities — have yielded very different results.
   The drugs for abnormal heart rhythm introduced in the late 1970s were killing more Americans every year by 1990 than the Vietnam War.
   Yet early evidence suggesting the drugs were lethal, which might have saved thousands of lives, went unpublished.
   Expensive cancer drugs introduced in the past 10 years and claiming to offer major benefits have increasingly been questioned.
   Evidence published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that 38 per cent of independent studies of the drugs reached unfavorable conclusions about them, compared with 5 per cent of the studies paid for by the pharmaceutical industry.
   In the latest case, the researchers commissioned by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to develop guidelines for the prescribing of anti-depressant drugs to children say they were refused access to the unpublished trials of the drugs held by the pharmaceutical companies.
   Published evidence suggested that the anti-depressant drugs were safe and effective for children.
   But when they obtained the unpublished evidence by contacting individual researchers who had worked on the trials and other sources, a different picture emerged — one of an increase in suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide. Only one of the drugs, Prozac, emerged as safe.
   Anti-depressant drugs, though not recommended for children, were widely prescribed in Britain until last year, when the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency issued a warning to doctors, prohibiting their use.
   This followed the safety concerns raised by campaigners and taken up in two BBC TV Panorama broadcasts which brought the biggest response in the program’s history.
   Writing in the Lancet medical magazine, the researchers say: " On the basis of published evidence alone, we could have considered at least tentatively recommending use of these drugs for children and young people with depression."
What was true about the drugs for abnormal heart rhythm?
选项 A、They killed lots of American soldiers in the Vietnam War.
B、They were known to be harmful at the early stage of its use.
C、They were illegally used due to their unpublished results.
D、They claimed to save thousands of lives but did it in vain.
答案B
解析 本题属细节题，考点是第五段中的every year和第六段中的early evidence。
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