Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A Good Start -- On Getting At Conflicted Research


That gentleman Ed Silverman, over at the shiny new Pharmalot, has a great piece up this morning -- on efforts to encourage NIH to fund research into the effects of conflicted drug and device clinical trials:

. . . .Dozens of researchers, clinicians, and ethicists sent a letter asking the NIH to fund research on medical ethics, conflicts of interest, and industry influence on prescribing behavior. Why? They note that stimulus funding has increased the NIH budget significantly, but the agency has "no mechanism for funding research on how commercial interests affect the choice of medical therapeutics. . . ."

[The letter-signing effort is being sponsored by pharmedout.org.] Do go read it all. This is an important moment -- a point of inflection -- where we may all change the [largely non-] system, for the betterment of patient outcomes. Here is a link to the full-text letter.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The forgot the industry corruption of the FDA.

Salmon

Condor said...

Excellent point, Salmon -- what should we do about it? [I wasn't involved in any drafting; just received the embargoed notice.]

Talk to Adrianne?

Let me know.

Namaste

Pharma Conduct Guy said...

Hi Condor,

Nice work on the badge. I'm proudly displaying it on my blog in the side bar (see blog.pharmaconduct.org).

Condor said...

Thanks -- wear it in GOOD health!

Been meaning to say that I've enjoyed, and answered, many of your polls!

Namaste