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

[SlimVirgin]

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.