On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 14:19, George Herbert <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 3:38 PM, SlimVirgin <[email protected]> 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. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
