[Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...

Mon Oct 25 21:19:04 UTC 2010

On 25/10/2010 21:54, SlimVirgin wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 14:19, George Herbert<george.herbert at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 3:38 PM, SlimVirgin<slimvirgin at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> We would not allow the people who make Coca Cola to be our sole
>>> sources on whether it's safe, or on whether we all ought to be
>>> drinking it. But when it comes to drugs and scientists, we lose sight
>>> of the fact that there is often a very strong conflict of interest.
>>>
>>> Sarah
>>
>> There's a societal problem there; we don't independently pay for many
>> scientific grade studies on medications.  There are some - but the
>> bulk of them are done by the drug companies in the course of getting
>> drugs studied and approved, and then as ongoing due dilligence as
>> they're used.
>>
>
> There's an interesting article here: Angell, Marcia.
> "Industry-Sponsored Clinical Research. A Broken System", The Journal
> of the American Medical Association, September 3, 2008
> http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/300/9/1069
>
> She writes: "Over the past 2 decades, the pharmaceutical industry has
> gained unprecedented control over the evaluation of its own products.
> Drug companies now finance most clinical research on prescription
> drugs, and there is mounting evidence that they often skew the
> research they sponsor to make their drugs look better and safer."
>
> I think we need to take very seriously that we're allowing a lot of
> our science articles to be sourced entirely to studies paid for by big
> corporations selling products.
>

Isn't that a problem of society, that we have raised the cost of 
bringing a drug to market to such a level that few can do it? And if the 
drug companies aren't going to be funding the clinical research who is? 
There are valid concerns for ensuring that there are oversights such 
that they don't get away with cooking the evidence, and that if the 
evidence is cooked they pay a very high price. But that isn't a reason 
to populate that drug pages with every bit of FUD that comes along.