where is the FDA in all this? disturbingly--on the take
- From: zwalanga@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 25 Jul 2005 19:24:20 -0700
"Everywhere one looks, drug money is sloshing about. During the 1990s,
the U.S. National Institute of Health's cholesterol guidelines
estimated that 13 million Americans could benefit from treatment with
statins-new cholesterol-lowering drugs. In 2001, a new panel of
experts revised that number upwards, to 36 million. In 2004, another
panel updated the guidelines again, to 40 million, a number that
included many Americans with relatively low risk of a future heart
attack. Why was this? Was it actually true that statins could now
benefit not only the sick, but the healthy as well? It's possible. But
it's hard to ignore the fact that eight of the nine experts who wrote
the 2004 guidelines also serve as paid speakers, consultants, or
researchers to drug companies-companies that stood to reap billions
from overnight changes that relabeled healthy people as sick and
created a new market for statins.
This doesn't mean the experts deliberately fudged the results, although
many researchers who aren't on the take, such as Dr. John Abramson of
Harvard, believe that statins, while useful for those who have suffered
heart attacks, offer very little benefit to healthy individuals, and
may even cause harmful side-effects. Rather, the problem is that it's
impossible to trust industry-funded numbers. A 2002 study estimated
that almost 90 percent of those who write guidelines for their peers
have financial conflicts of interests with drug companies. Combine that
with the knowledge that, as Moynihan and Cassels write: "The industry's
sponsorship is strategic, systematic, and systemic." That sponsorship
is designed to portray conditions that often are not very well
understood as severe, widespread, and, above all, treatable with drug
therapy. That's not to say that doctors are being paid to go against
their better judgment and shill for drug companies. But it does put the
objectivity of medical science into severe doubt.
Where is the Food and Drug Administration in all of this? Disturbingly,
on the take."
http://www.motherjones.com/com mentary/columns/2005/07/sellin
g_sicknes...
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