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Saturday, November 16, 2002On Oct 25 this year, ten academics wrote an editorial in Science bemoaning Tommy Thompson's, Secretary of Health and Human Services, "prerogative to hear preferentially from experts who share the president's philosophical sensibilities". The editorial describes how 15 of the 18 members of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Center for Environmental Health have been replaced, many with scientists with links to the chemical or petroleum industries, and that the Department of Health and Human Services' Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention has been stacked with industry-affiliated scientists. Well, I suppose it’s only human nature to notice other people’s faults before recognizing your own. The phrase “ten academics” should have alerted the Lancet’s editors to the potential for bias right away. The academics are complaining that people who hold opposing views to theirs are being appointed to advisory committees. Goodness. As Henry Miller ( a former FDA official) pointed out a few weeks ago, biased members of scientific advisory committees are nothing new. Here’s a list of the people responsible for a recent National Academy of Sciences sponsored EPA advisory committee on biotechnology: The members of the committee and the invited reviewers for the EPA report were selected with disregard for apparent conflicts of interest and known bias. Three members of the twelve-person committee (Stanley Abramson, Fred Betz and Morris Levin) are former EPA staff who had helped to craft and defend a variety of process-based regulatory policies at the agency, and another (Rebecca Goldburg) has produced a succession of anti-biotechnology tracts over the past decade and half. Moreover, during the formal review process, the document was reviewed by another former senior EPA official (Lynn Goldman) who had been instrumental in crafting and defending the policy in question, and by an intractable anti-biotechnology activist (Jane Rissler). Three members of the USDA committee (its chairman, Fred Gould, and David Andow and Norman Ellstrand) ) are long-time skeptics about the safety of recombinant plants and have consistently advocated process-based regulation, and another (Ignacio Chapela) is the author of a discredited article on alleged contamination of indigenous gene-spliced varieties of corn in Mexico by gene-spliced varieties. Even the staff director of the Academy's Board on Life Sciences, Frances Sharples, is a long-time anti-biotech activist. This weblog has also detailed the biases of other supposedly “dispassionate scientists” within the public health community and the Institute of Medicine. The Lancet goes on to lambast Congressional conservatives for removing a web page at the National Cancer Institute that addressed the issue of whether or not there's a link between abortion and breast cancer: The political right's attempts to influence expert opinion does not stop at filling scientific advisory panels. In June this year, the prestigious National Cancer Institute removed a factsheet--Abortion and possible risk for breast cancer--from its website while it is reviewed. This factsheet, which discussed the risk of breast cancer after an abortion, was removed after some members of Congress questioned its validity. Now, this is an interesting issue, and in truth it probably reflects political biases on both sides. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t aware of the controversy swirling around breast cancer and abortion until I did a google search on it today. Evidently, there has been some research that suggests that having an abortion slightly increases the risk of breast cancer, and there have been other studies that show that it doesn’t. The only people who seem to be concerned about the implications of the studies are the pro-choice groups and the pro-life groups. Believe me, it isn't one of the burning issues for those of who actually practice medicine. I doubt that most doctors include it in their discussions with patients who are considering abortion ( I know I don’t.) So why would the NCI even have had a web page about the supposed abortion-cancer link? Probably because someone with a political agenda encouraged them to. Someone who attributed more weight to the matter than it deserved. Just as surely, the Congressional request to remove the web page was instigated by political activists against abortion. And now in the third round, we have Congressmen from the other side of the aisle joining the fray at the instigation of the pro-abortion activists. This game could go on and on forever. But of course, the Lancet editors only see political motivation on one side. They then turn their attention to Dr. David Hager, the controversial nominee for a position within the FDA: W David Hager is a nominee to chair the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, the committee which, 2 years ago, approved the use of mifepristone as an abortifacient. Hager helped the Christian Medical Association last year to lobby for a safety review of mifepristone. But Hager's track record (at least in PubMed) as a researcher is sparse. His abilities as a doctor--voted "best doctor for women" by Good Housekeeping magazine--are lauded by his supporters, but his critics cite his religious views as a stumbling block to his nomination. The publisher's blurb on his book As Jesus cared for women describes biblical healings related to Hager's case studies and concludes that "Jesus longs to bring the same wholeness to today's women". This is not to decry faith in medicine: the perfect role model is C Everett Koop, US Surgeon General 1981-89, a devout Christian, and who maintained credibility by remaining impartial, especially in sensitive areas such as women's health and AIDS. This reads like a synopsis of the Maureen Dowd column on Dr. Hager. The Lancet sneers at his publication record, but it’s very difficult to search PubMed by author. A search for papers by “Hager, WD” does turn up several papers by the man, as well as those by a few other Hager, WD’s. In fact, he’s just as qualified as any other ob/gyn to be on an FDA advisory board. And, although the editors say that they don’t mean to “decry faith in medicine,” that’s exactly what their objection to Dr. Hager amounts to. If he were an Episcopalian rather than an evangelical, no one would be uncomfortable with him. Then, the (presumably) British editors deliver their final thrust. They tell us just exactly how we should be manning our government advisory committees: The current US Administration is certainly pro-industry, pro-family, and on the religious right. Any threat to impartial science-policy advice, especially advice that affects health and health-care choices, will harm most those whose voices are unheeded by the right-wing--the poor, minorities, those without health insurance, those living in the shadow of polluting industries, those at risk of sexually transmitted infection (especially young people), young people who need realistic contraceptive advice, single mothers, and intravenous drug users. Translation: These committees should be filled with people of the same ideological bent as the writer of this editorial, that is left. Only a biased mind would indulge in such stereotypical labels and use them to smear those with whom they disagree. Sadly, it appears that the same sort of fevered lunacy that has infected a significant portion of the Democratic faithful has also infected the editorial staff of the Lancet. And that, dear readers, should give us all pause. For if you can’t count on a scientific journal to be unbiased, who can you count on? posted by Sydney on 11/16/2002 01:50:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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