Correction! A panel calling itself the Institute of Medicine as a Profession (IMP) is calling for a ban on the intermingling of industry and academic scholars and physicians. This is NOT affiliated with the Institute of Medicine (IOM)
"It’s not a question of just knowing the risks and it’s not a question of labeling against risk. The question is how do you change behavior?"
This issue is NOT about trial lawyers, this issue is about the rights and health, and safety of ordinary citizens.
Two items in today’s New York Times illustrate the contrast between what the Administration claims it’s legislative / regulatory proposals will do for health care, and what they actually do after they’ve taken effect.
Big Pharma by Jacky Law reveals that in essence, most of the pharmaceutical industry’s claims are false; it is not the drug, but the placebo effect whose potency deserves almost all of the credit for any health improvement:
FDA political appointees have embarked on a plan to divest the American consumer of the right to seek compensation for defective prescription drugs.
”SO WHY,” he asks, “DID American doctors prescribe $7 billion worth of Vioxx after Merck and the Food and Drug Administration knew all this?”
"When you’re talking deaths in clinical trials, mistakes are not an option," said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. "It’s just an area where we have to have absolute, foolproof reporting in place."
New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, got it right!
The real story behind the crisis at Merck, the Cleveland Clinic, and the medical industrial complex as a whole "is bigger than either the company or the clinic. It’s the story of how growing conflicts of interest may be distorting both medical research and health care in general."
Gov Accountability Project Creates “FactSquad” on Rx Drugs December 11, 2005 In the wake of the credibility crisis public trust in the safety of FDA-approved prescription drugs is eroded. The Government Accounability Project (GAP) has established a “Fact Squad” to challenge poor performance; in particular, FDA’s failure to protect the…
Loss of Trust: Big Drug Makers See Sales Decline With Their Image – NYT Mon, 14 Nov 2005 The lead front page article in today’s New York Times reports: “A poll last month showed that only 9 percent of Americans believed drug companies were generally honest, down from 14 percent…
"Every year, drug companies spend $14 billion to test experimental substances on humans. Across the U.S., the centers that do the testing–and the regulators who watch them–allow scores of human test subjects to be injured or killed."
