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Wednesday, April 26, 2006From the Washington Post: The study by Public Citizen's Health Research Group did find that conflicts of interest can slightly increase the likelihood that panelists will vote to recommend that the agency approve a drug. The group's analysis of voting data was culled from 221 drug advisory committee meetings from 2001 to 2004. "For every additional conflict you have a 10 percent increased probability that the meeting will favor the company more," said co-author Peter Lurie, deputy director of health research. What Mr. Lurie wrote in his research paper: A weak relationship between certain types of conflicts and voting behaviors was detected, but excluding advisory committee members and voting consultants with conflicts would not have altered the overall vote outcome at any meeting studied. Why the difference in tone between the scientific paper and the interview with the reporter? Maybe it's the agenda. From the Boston Globe: Despite its finding that advisers with conflicts had a ''weak" impact on votes to approve or reject specific drugs, Public Citizen endorses the same zero-tolerance goal. To hell with the evidence. Tell the papers what you had hoped to find, and hope they won't read your paper. Especially if your paper was supposed to be a weapon in a bureaucratic war: The JAMA paper comes, however, as members of Congress prod the agency to weed out advisers with drug industry connections. Hmmmm. posted by Sydney on 4/26/2006 06:55:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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