Dr. Timothy Scott
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 Financial conflict of interest Rules
The rules for when a financial conflict of interest occurs fail to insure even some semblance of objectivity. Committee members can receive up to $50,000 per year from a drug company for any reason without it being considered a financial conflict of interest if the "work" is not directly tied to the drug the committee is evaluating.34 Not until a committee member has stock holdings greater than $ 100,000 is exclusion expected to prevent participation in a drug's approval process. |
Charles Barber
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 About half of those studies were authored by at least one person with a reported financial conflict of interest. To no one's evident surprise, trials that reported such a conflict of interest were almost five times more likely to find positive results about the drug.75
For schizophrenia drugs, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other companies have run numerous direct trials, in which their drug is compared with a competing product. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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| Financial conflict of interest Rules
The rules for when a financial conflict of interest occurs fail to insure even some semblance of objectivity. Committee members can receive up to $50,000 per year from a drug company for any reason without it being considered a financial conflict of interest if the "work" is not directly tied to the drug the committee is evaluating.34 Not until a committee member has stock holdings greater than $ 100,000 is exclusion expected to prevent participation in a drug's approval process. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 At 92% of these meetings in the year 2000, one expert had a financial conflict of interest, and at 55% of the meetings, at least half the members had a conflict of interest.51 This does not mean that consultants are dishonest, but it does raise considerable suspicion.
There are also inevitable organizational problems for the FDA. Indeed, the mission of the FDA contains inherent contradictions that lead to inevitable dissonance. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
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 This creates extraordinary pressure — and a conflict of interest — for companies who profess to have the public good in mind, but are really beholden to the stockholders.
This brings us to the drug approval process. The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation's food supply, cosmetics and products that emit radiation.5 The key words in this description of the agency's mission are "protecting the public" and "assuring safety. |
Stacy Malkan
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 This is a conflict of interest unparalleled in the history of American medicine," said Dr. Samuel Epstein, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. "You've got a company that's a spin-off of one of the world's biggest manufacturers of carcinogenic chemicals, they've got control of breast cancer treatment, they've got control of the chemoprevention [studies], and now they have control of cancer treatment in eleven centers — which are clearly going to be prescribing the drugs they manufacture. |
Luca Turin
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 But why send the papers to people who may have a conflict of interest? Very simply, because they are the most able to judge the work on its technical merits. This is the single most important thing wrong with contemporary science: when a field is specialized enough, only people who have a conflict of interest can fully judge your work. The ideal referee would be an honest broker who (a) knows enough to figure out for herself what the story is about while (b) not caring passionately enough about the outcome to find her judgement affected. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 REPPED: The facts found in the report are almost as astonishing as the source of the report itself: USA Today, a mainstream media giant in the United States, has revealed the apparent financial conflict of interest by U.S. Senators who voted against the infamous S.1082 reimportation amendment. That amendment would have ended Big Pharma's monopoly over U.S. consumers and ultimately saved American citizens, businesses and governments tens of millions of dollars by allowing them to import medicines from other nations with approved safety records (such as Canada or Japan). |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The same survey also revealed that a majority of doctors would send their patients to get expensive imaging work done at an imaging facility in which they held a financial interest, but only 24 percent of doctors said they would reveal that conflict of interest to patients.
Result: Yet more incompetent, dishonest doctors continue to scam customers and harm patients. |
Shannon Brownlee
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 In a subsequent editorial, New England Journal editors Marcia Angell and Jerome Kassirer bemoaned the authors' failure to disclose their financial relationships, noting that Manson and Faich's conclusion, that fen-phen's benefits outweighed the risks, was just the sort of practical summary the journal wanted—if only the experts offering it had not had a conflict of interest. The fact that the authors were paid consultants, they wrote, "raises troubling questions." Later, Manson and Faich chalked up the omission to a "series of unfortunate misunderstandings" with their editors. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Why is this such a conflict of interest? Because it teaches the publisher to create advertiser-friendly article content as a way to generate advertising opportunities that ad salespeople can then pitch to deep-pocketed advertisers. Ultimately, it turns the publication into a giant advertorial.
In contrast, at Truth Publishing, Google chooses our advertisers after we have already written, edited and posted our feature articles. So there's no conflict of interest, and there's no solicitation of advertisers.
2. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Such a relationship with private industry is an unprecedented conflict of interest, totally at odds with drug safety. The current commissioner of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. is little more than a Big Biotech sales rep with massive industry connections.
The House, like the Senate, will continue to allow direct to consumer advertising of new drugs with unknown risks -- a flagrant safety risk that will cost many people their lives. Congressional leaders said they couldn't prevent this advertisement for fear of violating the first amendment rights of drug companies. What a joke. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Editors may "face a frighteningly stark conflict of interest" in deciding whether to publish such a study, Dr. Smith said. It is often easier to just let fraudulent data slip through their fingers or minds in the hope that nobody will find out. Fraud has also slipped through in part because editors have long been loath to question the authors. The peer-review system of medical journals, which is supposed to be the iron-gate for keeping away fraudulent medical studies, is now more than questionable, given the recent disclosures of flawed published studies. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 CONFLICTS OF INTEREST" shall be banned from the English language entirely, since there is no such thing as any conflict of interest at the FDA or anywhere in medicine.
"SAFE" shall mean any drug that makes at least a billion dollars in profit while killing less than a hundred thousand Americans each year.
"SCIENTIFIC" shall mean any opinion statement or fraudulent statistical distortion that supports the definition of "safe," above.
"PROVEN" shall mean any finding that is supported by a majority vote of corrupt FDA decision makers. |
Shannon Brownlee
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| There's growing awareness among medical professional societies that conflict of interest is a real problem that isn't going to go away if they ignore it. The press is (finally) investigating the myriad ways in which medicine's financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry are harming patients and distorting medical science. Many doctors don't want to have to change their ways—a doctor at a recent medical meeting stood up in the back of the room where a speaker was discussing the issue of gifts to doctors and said, "I like getting pens and sticky notepads and free lunches. Don't ruin it for me! |
Charles Barber
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| To no one's evident surprise, trials that reported such a conflict of interest were almost five times more likely to find positive results about the drug.75
For schizophrenia drugs, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other companies have run numerous direct trials, in which their drug is compared with a competing product. All five of the studies paid for by Lilly showed the superiority of their drug Zyprexa to Risperdal, while three of the four Johnson & Johnson studies favored Risperdal over Zyprexa. "The comparative studies are a joke. They are comical. |
Michael J. Panzner
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 It's worth keeping in mind, however, that they often receive requests for ratings from, and are paid by, the subject firms themselves, which can represent a potential conflict of interest. Several offer free data on ratings to the public as well as helpful alert features that notify subscribers of a change. Also, agencies such as Weiss Ratings, at http:/'/weissratings. com, evaluate the financial condition of numerous banks, insurers, and other entities but don't take any compensation or direction from the firms they review. |
by Michael Murray, N.D. and Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.
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| Feingold contended that there is a conflict of interest on the part of the Nutrition Foundation, an organization supported by major food manufacturers, such as Coca-Cola, Nabisco, and General Foods. It appears significant that the Nutrition Foundation has financed most of the negative studies. Feingold contends that the conflict of interest arises because these companies would suffer economically if food additives were found to be harmful. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
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 Ioannidis singled out the following types of studies as being particularly likely to lead to a worthless result:
• Studies with a small sample size;
• Studies that consider a small number of possible effects;
• Studies whose outcomes are poorly or subjectively defined;
• Studies in which financial conflict of interest is a factor;
• Studies in which the researchers are prejudiced by being unduly wedded to a particular outcome; and
• Studies of a topic that is currently "hot. |
Peter Rost
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 This could create the appearance of a potential conflict of interest and there was also risk for an impact on employee selection and compensation if these liaisons had indeed taken place. Accepting sexual favors might clearly violate Pfizer's policy on conflict of interest.
Then I told them all the specifics about the various allegations.
I ended telling them that I was prepared to give detailed information, including dates, locations and facts related to the allegations listed in my memo. |
| I also referred to Pfizer's guidelines on employment policies and the fact that the company advises its employees that they "should avoid situations that present either an actual or potential conflict of interest or even the appearance of a potential conflict of interest."
Having duly given them the context of my letter, I explained that employees had alleged that Pfizer management had violated the above guidelines by pursuing extramarital and other sexual relationships with people in their reporting line. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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 Potential sources of conflict of interest that might allow dangerous drugs to hit the marketplace and be marketed to billions of consumers are getting more media attention. The FDA is making new rulings to eliminate conflicts of interest between doctors who work for the FDA and get paid by drug companies to research and promote their products. Consumers are also becoming more active in researching the drugs their doctors prescribe and working with their medical teams to make educated decisions about what to take—or not. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 There is obviously a serious conflict of interest here, especially if this study is to be taken as "fact" and applied to public health policy. There also need to be a close look at any financial links between the researchers involved in this study and various vaccine manufacturers, as virtually all pro-drug "science" (if you can call it that) being published these days is influenced by Big Pharma money.
The only truly honest, independent, peer-reviewed medical journal operating today is PLoS Medicine, an open-source journal that takes no money from drug companies. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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 The remaining whistle-blowers in the FDA had to write an anonymous letter to Congress, complaining of fraud and conflict of interest in the agency. They described one FDA scientist, Margaret Miller, who arbitrarily increased the allowable levels of antibiotics in milk one-hundredfold. This was necessary before approving rbGH. Since the drug increases the chance of udder infections, farmers inject cows with more antibiotics. This leads to a higher risk of antibiotic resistant diseases in cows and humans. |
| Such concern with industry development, though understandable, highlights another aspect of the regulatory conflict. The conflict of interest involved in both promoting and regulating an industry or technology ... is also a factor in the issue of maintaining the transparency, and therefore the scientific integrity, of the regulatory process. |
Melody Petersen
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 The close business relationship between these in-store clinics and pharmacies also created a conflict of interest. The more meds prescribed in the clinic, the more money made at the pharmacy counter. There was a danger that patients would get drugs they did not need or whatever medicine happened to make the most money for the pharmacy, whether it was the best one for them or not.
It had come to a point where almost any bodily function or any feeling could be tweaked with the help of a pill. |
Jeffrey M. Smith
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| Other FDA employees sent an anonymous letter complaining of "fraud" and "conflict of interest" in relation to the drug's approval. They claimed, for example, that a Monsanto-re-searcher-turned-FDA-employee raised allowable levels of antibiotics in milk one-hundredfold, to pave the way for rbGH approval.23 And when Canadian government scientists analyzed how the FDA approved rbGH, they wrote that the "evaluation was largely a theoretical review taking the manufacturer's conclusions at face value. No details of the studies nor a critical analysis of the quality of the data was provided. |
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