|
A
verdade sobre as revistas
técnicas de medicina e como a indústria
farmacêutica exerce forte influência sobre
pesquisas
acadêmicas e artigos
científicos publicados. O título do texto é claro. No artigo abaixo, publicado no enorme website de Mike Adams, aparece uma quantidade incrível de informações sobre como e o quanto a indústria farmacêutica controla e influencia (com dinheiro) o que é publicado no meio médico científico. Desde a faculdade, professores e alunos estudam e lêem artigos científicos mentirosos escritos de forma a distorcer a verdade e propagar mentiras favoráveis ao enorme "business" que é a indústria das doenças: os cartéis farmacêuticos. O website distribui um boletim informativo gratuito, inscreva-se aqui: http://www.newstarget.com Fonte do artigo abaixo: http://www.newstarget.com/012119.html __________________________________________________________________ The truth about medical journals, and how drug companies exert heavy influence over published scientific articlesPosted Oct 3, 2005 PT by Ben KageCan the medical journals be trusted to provide accurate, unbiased information about medicine even as they are almost entirely funded by drug companies? In her book, Vaccination, Peggy O'Mara writes that the current era of medical beliefs (or dogma) began to develop soon after Louis Pasteur's demonstration that some pathogens could be converted into vaccines. The medical community then decided to try the same method for all afflictions. Medical journals were soon afterward reporting the discovery of "miracle" vaccines for every disease under the sun, and drug companies were simultaneously advertising those vaccines on those very same pages. Medical journals rely on Big Pharma's ads to pay the billsMainstream media has long depended on advertising revenue to cover its bills. The money generated by newspaper subscriptions doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of a daily paper's running costs. Television stations also rely on advertising clients to foot the bill for everyday operations. And of course it is no surprise that medical companies are only too happy to shell out some bucks in advertising to make their product a household name. The big difference in medical journals is that readers are hardly likely to see a non-medical ad within its pages.On television, a plethora of commercials offer products ranging from dog food to cosmetics to medicine. In newspapers, the ads often run the gamut of available products and local services. Medical journals, though, have a specific kind of advertising content within their pages. All their ads are for hospitals or drugs; there's not a non-medical ad in sight. Since medicine is the subject of the entire journal, medical ads seem par for the course. But what should an editor do if a product advertised on a particular page isn't 100 percent safe? It might not be cost-effective for a budget-strapped medical journal to remove the ad and publish an article discussing the product's drawbacks. They run the risk of angering the pharmaceutical company and losing revenue. Donald M. Epstein, author of Healing Myths, adds that even if the dangers of a drug or medical procedure were to be included in a respected medical journal, often the "religious" belief that doctors, and even patients, have in conventional medicine overrides their decision-making process. People believe that if a drug is FDA-approved and on the market, it must be okay. If a drug proves fatal to 10 or even 10,000 patients, doctors will still staunchly defend it, claiming the benefits outweigh the risks. Epstein's feelings are that anyone with a little common sense should be enraged by the fact that the entire industry is operating with self-imposed blinders -- from the pharmaceutical companies that hawk unsafe drugs to the medical journals that publish doctored clinical studies and misleading ads. What really makes the controversy interesting for many folks is this: If the journals were ever to publish a study that finds a procedure within a different healing art -- such as herbal or chiropractic medicine -- to be harmful or fatal to patients, there would be a loud and obvious call to outlaw or regulate that practice. Only Big Pharma and the Western health care system are allowed to operate with obvious dangers (like the Vioxx drug killing more Americans than the entire Vietnam War) and get away with it. A further frustration for Epstein is that drugs and procedures proven to be unsafe or ineffective do not deter the medical community from developing new treatments based on the old "biomedical story." Consumers falsely trust medical journals to be impartialRichard Smith, the ex-editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), publicly criticized his former publication, saying the BMJ was too dependent on advertising revenue to be considered impartial. Smith estimates that between two-thirds to three-quarters of the trials published in major journals -- Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine -- are funded by the industry, while about one-third of the trials published in the BMJ are thus funded.He further adds that trials are so valuable to drug companies that they will often spend upwards of $1 million in reprint costs (which are additional sources of major revenues for medical journals). Consumers trust medical journals to be the impartial and "true" source of information concerning a prescription drug, but few are privy to what is truly going on behind the scenes at both drug trials and medical journals. Scientists who conduct drug trials may be hard-pressed to stay impartial when the manufacturers so often pay them for lectures and consultations, or when they are conducting research that has been funded by the company. In addition, as stated by doctors Mark Hyman and Mark Liponis in Ultraprevention, since drug companies are so reliant on the word of doctors, they often visit doctors' offices to hand out free samples, take the staff out to lunch, offer free gifts -- including toys for kids, seminars at expensive restaurants and junkets to the Caribbean islands -- and frequently sponsor continuing education for doctors. According to Smith, BMJ editors want
to be impartial most of the time, but it is often impossible for
editors to spot a rigged drug trial, notwithstanding the "peer review"
process theoretically used by drug companies in order to have their
research independently checked. Smith said that drug companies don't
fiddle with the results of a trial, but they obtain positive results by
asking the "right" questions. Another pothole mentioned by Smith was the choice a publisher might face to either publish a drug trial that would bring in $100,000 in profit, or lay off an employee in order to meet the end-of-year budget. The answer, according to Smith, is to have more publicly-funded trials, or have journals not publish them at all. Big Pharma's published studies lack transparencySmith provided specific examples of wrongdoing, including the testing of a new drug against a treatment already known to be inferior, using too high or too low of a dosage for a competing drug, testing on too small of a scale, or choosing which results they want to make public. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry denied Smith's allegations, stating that it would not rig a trial due to the high risk of being "found out." Richard Ley, a spokesman for the industry group, said that it was not within the interests of the industry to make claims they know to be untrue, since the cost of lawsuits far outweigh any potential income those claims might generate. Ley also said that Smith's suggestion for more publicly-funded trials was not realistic.Fiona Godlee, current editor of the BMJ, did not debunk Smith's claims; in fact, she agreed with much of what Smith said. "The BMJ takes the issues of transparency very seriously," she said. "We continue to call for public registration of all clinical trials and full disclosure of results, regardless of outcome." Godlee added that there was a need for more transparency in the journal and that it was something they were working on. The difficulty, Godlee said, lies in having to tell a drug company to "clean up their act," while simultaneously relying on them for money. Godlee added, "What we need now is a debate about the issue." In his book, On the Take, Dr. Jerome Kassirer says he is confident that, for the latter part of the 20th century, drug company ads had no influence on the editorial content of the New England Journal of Medicine. But he also adds that he is not sure the same could be said for other medical journals. He agrees with some of what Smith says, citing a negative study of the pharmaceutical industry published in Annals of Internal Medicine, which resulted in dramatically lower pharmaceutical advertising for the journal. This decrease in advertising interest continued for many months. This is an example of why medical journal editors are, at best, afraid of contradicting their major source of income. Misrepresenting drug trials is the "norm" in medical journalsThe scandal in medical research is far more shocking than the corporate scandals that recently created headlines, according to John Abramson in Overdosed America. Abramson says that the withholding of negative results and the misrepresentation of research are accepted norms in the field of drug trials, or "commercially sponsored medical research."He even goes as far as to say that there is a web of corporate influence in the form of "regulatory agencies, commercially sponsored medical education, brilliant advertising, expensive public relations campaigns, manipulation of free media coverage," as well as the aforementioned relationship between trusted medical voices and the medical industry. In Abramson's view, this all contributes to the silencing of the industry's corruption. He likens the situation to the recent corporate scandal in which securities analysts received payments in order to write reports that drove up stock prices. According to Ann Blake Tracy, PhD,
author of PROZAC: Panacea or Pandora, a "CBS HealthWatch"
article even accused pharmaceutical companies of authoring drug studies
themselves, then paying doctors to sign their names onto them.
Furthermore, of the approximately 3,000 medical journals published
monthly, only 10 percent are cross-indexed into a computer system,
according to Charles T. McGee, in his book, Heart Frauds.
This cross-indexed material is closely reviewed by "conservative
editorial boards" in order to screen out controversial content. The 10 percent of material that's been approved is the only material available to a doctor when he asks a medical librarian to conduct a computer search or a search of a CD-ROM service such as Medline. On top of that is Kenny Ausubel's report, contained in his book, When Healing Becomes a Crime, that many drug companies just cut out the middle-man and publish their own medical journals. Inexpensive herbal remedies never appear in medical journalsTheoretically, for much the same reason dog food ads are absent from their pages, medical journals never contain advertising or studies about natural or herbal remedies. Supposedly, they're not considered "in tune" with the content of the journals. However, many nutritional experts and some medical doctors postulate that it's actually due to the low amount of revenue generated by such remedies, since herbs are usually significantly less expensive than over-the-counter and prescription drugs. This may be why such inexpensive treatments often seem to be dismissed offhand by medical journal editors.McGee also writes about Dr. Richard
Casdorph, who studied some old experiments in chelation therapy (a
procedure that uses ethylenediamine tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) to remove
metals from the body) and had success with the treatment by using
methods that were not available when the initial experiments were
performed. In one case, Casdorph apparently saved two patients from the
amputation of their legs via chelation therapy. When he tried to publish his study, many medical journals rejected it, stating that chelation therapy was found to be ineffective years before, and was therefore inappropriate content for their publications. Presumably, Casdorph would have informed the editors that his study involved previously undiscovered methods, in which case their reason for rejection would be a non-sequitur. Casdorph eventually found a journal of alternative medicine that agreed to publish his study. Opponents of the perceived corruption
in medical journals offer many solutions. Smith, as mentioned
previously, would either like more privately-funded studies published
or have none published at all. Abramson feels that researchers have to
have access to all the results of their studies, perform their own
analysis of data, write their own conclusions and submit the report to
peer-reviewed medical journals. A change may be in the cards, and as Richard Gerber, MD, notes, the number of patients seeking alternative medical answers to their problems is becoming too large for mainstream medical media to ignore. Gerber says that some medical journals are even publishing articles that explore the nature of these "unorthodox" treatments and discuss why patients are seeking alternative health care. Research Notes:Ex-medical journal editor reveals drug firms' dirty tricksIAN JOHNSTON SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT PHARMACEUTICAL companies are using their massive financial clout to corrupt medical journals by rigging clinical trials of new drugs, it was claimed today. Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), has exposed a series of tricks used by drug firms to ensure good publicity for new products in prestigious journals. He said it was often impossible for editors of the journals to spot a rigged trial - despite the process of "peer review" where research is checked independently - and also highlighted a "conflict of interest" because publishing trials by major drug companies would result in increased sales. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry denied the allegations, saying it would make no sense to rig trials because they would eventually be "found out". Writing in the online journal PLOS [Public Library of Science] Medicine, Mr Smith, who is now chief executive of private firm UnitedHealth Europe, said action should be taken to ensure journals were not becoming "an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies". "A large trial published in a major journal has the journal’s stamp of approval, will be distributed round the world and may well receive global media coverage," he said. "For a drug company, a favourable trial is worth thousands of pages of advertising. "The companies seem to get the results [in trials] they want not by fiddling the results, which would be far too crude and possibly detectable by peer review, but rather by asking the ‘right’ questions." Med journals 'too close to firms' Dr Richard Smith, who edited the BMJ for 13 years, criticized the journals' reliance on drug company advertising. Writing in Public Library of Science Medicine, he also said journals were undermined by relying on clinical trials funded by the drugs industry. The BMJ said a debate was needed, but drug industry representatives rejected the criticisms. Dr Smith, who is now chief executive of healthcare firm UnitedHealth Europe, said the most conspicuous example of the dependence was reliance on advertising, but he added it was "the least corrupting form of dependence" since it was there for all to see. Dr Smith said the publication of industry-funded trials was a much bigger problem. He said: "For a drug company a favorable trial is worth thousands of pages of advertising, which is why a company will sometimes spend upwards of a million dollars on reprints of the trial for worldwide distribution." And Dr Smith argued, unlike ads, these trials were seen as the highest form of evidence. "Fortunately from the point of view of the companies which fund these trials - but unfortunately for the credibility of the journals who publish them - they rarely produce results that are unfavorable to the companies' products." He said editors are put under further pressure by the demands of producing a profit. "An editor may thus face a frighteningly stark conflict of interest - publish a trial that will bring in $100,000 (£54,000) of profit, or meet the end of year budget by firing an editor." Publicly-funded trials He said there needed to be more publicly-funded trials - about two thirds are currently paid for by the industry - or journals should stop publishing such trials. BMJ editor Dr Fiona Godlee said she agreed with much of what Mr Smith said. "There is certainly a need for more transparency, it is something we are working on. "The whole issue about advertising is something journals are uncomfortable about. "On the one hand we are saying clean up your act, while we are fairly dependent on the advertising for our survival. "What we need now is a debate about the issue." But Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said Smith's criticisms were unfounded. "There would be an outcry if a pharmaceutical company tried to put pressure on. "And we must also remember these trials are peer reviewed." He also added it was not realistic to think trials could be funded form public money. Excerpt from story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4552509.stm Even when evidence is published in
respected medical journals documenting the dangers of certain drugs and
procedures, the unquestioned and almost religious belief in the
biomedical model still rules the decision-making process among doctors
and patients alike. If the above findings applied to practitioners of
any other healing art, including chiropractors,
acupuncturists, or herbalists, their professions would have been
eliminated, their proponents ridiculed or thrown in jail, and their
schools closed by order of the courts. Instead, the medical
establishment today enjoys incredible prestige. Philanthropists donate
billions of dollars for medical research, construction of hospitals,
and other curing establishments. Even when it is proven that certain
drugs or procedures never worked or no longer work, new treatments,
based on the old biomedical story, are generated every day. Before long, drug companies
themselves acquired and published medical journals, pouring their
proprietaries through the funnel of official medical publications to
disperse through doctors. They also lavished advertising dollars on
independent medical journals, becoming their fiscal anchor. By the turn
of the century, only one out of 250 medical journals relied solely on
subscription revenues from its professional constituency.28 Three of these studies were
published in leading medical journals. No efforts were made to attract
media attention to the embarrassing results. If the media had picked up
the story they could have accurately reported, "The diagnostic test
used to scare the pants off heart disease
patients and coerce them into billions of dollars of unnecessary surgical
procedures is a scam." The information was ignored by physicians
and never picked up by the press. Drug companies control
what gets published in medical journals through their advertising
dollars. An interesting situation surfaced several years ago when a
medical journal published a double-blind study showing an herb had
beneficial effects in the condition being studied. Most medical journals
now contain about one-third printed material and two-thirds slick
advertisements for drugs. According to the Wall Street Journal, drug
companies spent over $330,000,000 on advertising directed at doctors in
1990. You can rest assured major medical journals that rely on drug
industry money are not going to publish articles that demonstrate
benefits from competing treatments such as diets, herbs,
acupuncture, chelation, vitamins,
minerals,
amino
acids, or other complimentary approaches. Then again, what
about biting the hand that feeds you? Some scientists may be swayed
because they receive money from the chemical or pharmaceutical
industries forgiving lectures or consulting, or their research may be
funded through industry. For example, since 1997 nearly half the
articles evaluating drugs in the New England Journal of Medicine were
written by scientists who worked as paid advisers to drugmakers or
received major research funding from them. Most medical journals these
days don't require the authors of studies to stay independent of
industry. There is also
little information about any possible influences of the profitability
of medical journals (advertising, reprint orders) on journals'
editorial content. I am confident that for at least the last quarter of
the twentieth century, these commercial influences had no influence on
editorial decisions made by the editors of the New England Journal of
Medicine, but I have no inside information on other journals. Dr.
Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal, has raised the
concern that lucrative advertising and reprint sales can be a
corrupting influence.15 One experience at the Annals of Internal
Medicine in 1992 sent a chill down the spines of editors and publishers
alike. When the (then) editors, Drs. Suzanne and Robert Fletcher,
published a study sharply critical of the pharmaceutical industry,16
pharmaceutical advertising in the journal declined substantially, and
remained lower than usual for months thereafter.17 For editors of many
journals whose profit margins are not robust, that experience might
lead them to be chary about criticizing the advertisers who
support their publications. These issues are worthy of much more study,
but whether editors can be forthcoming about the factors that influence
them, and whether the editors' personal financial conflicts influence
them in judging what to publish will be difficult, if not impossible,
to assess. What I
found over the next two and a half years of "researching the research"
is a scandal in medical science that is at least the equivalent of any
of the recent corporate scandals that have shaken Americans' confidence
in the integrity of the corporate and financial worlds. Rigging medical
studies, misrepresenting research results published in even the most
influential medical journals, and withholding the findings of whole
studies that don't come out in a sponsor's favor have all become the
accepted norm in commercially sponsored medical research. To keep the
lid sealed on this corruption of medical science—and to ensure its
translation into medical practice—there is a complex web of corporate
influence that includes disempowered regulatory agencies, commercially
sponsored medical education, brilliant advertising, expensive public
relations campaigns, and manipulation of free media coverage. And last,
but not least, are the financial ties between many of the most trusted
medical experts and the medical industry. These relationships bear a
remarkable resemblance to the conflicts of interest the Securities and
Exchange Commission recently brought to a halt after learning that
securities analysts were receiving bonuses for writing reports that
drove up stock prices with the intent of bringing in more investment
banking business. and
public scrutiny. Nontransparency is now the norm for commercially
sponsored medical research in much the same way that it had become the
norm in accounting and business practices in companies such as Enron and Worldcom,
and with much the same results—though the magnitude of the cost in
dollars and health still remains a well-kept secret. Medical
researchers must have access to all the results of their studies,
perform their own analyses of the data, write up their own conclusions,
and submit the report for publication to peer-reviewed medical
journals. Research data must also be made available to peer reviewers
for medical journals and to the new oversight body for independent
evaluation. Corporate-sponsored
scientific
symposiums
provide another means for manipulating the
content of medical journals. In 1992, the New England Journal of
Medicine itself published a survey of 625 such symposiums which found
that 42 percent of them were sponsored by a single pharmaceutical
sponsor. There was a correlation, moreover, between single-company
sponsorship and practices that commercialize or corrupt the scientific
review process, including symposiums with misleading titles designed to
promote a specific brand-name product. "Industry-sponsored symposia are
promotional in nature and . . . journals often abandon the peer-review
process when they publish symposiums,' the survey concluded.20 Drummond
Rennie, a deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical
Association, describes how the process works in plainer language: And
so on, and so on, until your medicine cabinet
looks like a pharmacy—which, of course, pleases the pharmaceutical
companies. They'd like to think that doctors work for them. Because
these large pharmaceutical companies make money only when doctors
prescribe their drugs, they do everything they can to make sure that
this happens, from supporting medical journals with their ads to having
their representatives visit every single doctor's office in the
country, where they hand out free samples, buy lunch for the staff,
distribute gifts—not just paperweights and pens, but toys for the kids,
"seminars" at excellent restaurants, junkets on Caribbean islands. And
since doctors are required to continue their medical education, who do
you suppose generally sponsors that education? Pharmaceutical
companies. And
so
on,
and so on, until your medicine cabinet looks like a
pharmacy—which, of course, pleases the pharmaceutical companies. They'd
like to think that doctors work for them. Because these large
pharmaceutical companies make money only when doctors prescribe their
drugs, they do everything they can to make sure that this happens, from
supporting medical journals with their ads to having their
representatives visit every single doctor's office in the country,
where they hand out free samples, buy lunch for the staff, distribute
gifts—not just paperweights and pens, but toys for the kids, "seminars"
at excellent restaurants, junkets on Caribbean islands. And since
doctors are required to continue their medical education, who do you
suppose generally sponsors that education? Pharmaceutical companies. That
marketing
"strategy"
isn't reserved just for patients. Medical doctors
are targeted by drug advertising as well, and medical journals are
filled with ads pushing one drug over another. The drug industry spends
millions of dollars every year on advertising and, according to the
report, "the money is well spent, since marketing undoubtedly
influences the way that doctors prescribe." Following
Pasteur's
demonstration
that attenuation of pathogenic microbes transformed
some pathogens into vaccines, the international scientific community
rushed to identify and convert into vaccines the leading causes of
death in the industrial world: tuberculosis,
pneumonia, cholera, dysentery, diphtheria, meningitis, influenza, typhoid,
childbed fever, and sexually transmitted diseases. Corrupt
pharmaceutical companies quickly started producing vaccines
scientifically "proven" to prevent all these diseases and more. medical
journals rushed into print successful accounts of the discovery of
"miracle" vaccines for tuberculosis, syphilis, and other such diseases.
American medical journals also started carrying advertisements for and
receiving enticing funds from pharmaceutical companies selling such
vaccines. Most, if not all, of these vaccines were worthless; many were
even harmful. And though they were published in the leading medical
journals, supporting studies were bogus. But then, as now, it was
difficult for many to accept that pharmaceutical companies could be
guilty of chicanery. A
large
proportion
of the medical journals published today could not stay
in business without advertising dollars from the pharmaceutical
industry. While such strong-arm tactics as those alleged against JAMA
are probably the exception, there is undoubtedly a more subtle, but
more pervasive, type of pressure on editorial boards to keep their
sources of funding happy. Since virtually every medical journal
advertiser would be displeased by articles emphasizing natural medicine
over drugs and surgery, there is little incentive for editorial boards
to accept these articles. I
am
not
implying that those who review manuscripts are corrupt or even
conscious of their bias. Nevertheless, doctors and scientists who are
interested in nutritional
medicine almost invariably complain about how difficult it is to
have their work published in "peer-reviewed" medical journals. All
this
research
and money has been spent to prove the obvious! Yet,
despite all these logical findings, health authorities, medical doctors
and other health professionals are not taking advantage of the benefits
that nutrition (see related ebook on nutrition) can bring
in reducing the incidence and mortality of many diseases. The thing
that really amazes me is that doctors do not recognize any relationship
between diet and brain function (behavior, learning capacity, etc.),
proof enough that they are eating too much junk! Their only "brain
food" is reading
medical journals which, as I will expose, has resulted in atrocious
judgmental errors. A
CBS
health
report was released: Ghostwriting Articles for medical
journals
http://cbshealthwatch.medscape.com/medscape/p/G_Library/article.asp?Recld=2381
Now, many drug companies are actually writing those articles
and
then paying doctors to sign their names to them. It's called
ghostwriting. "The articles are written by drug company researchers,
given to an outside doctor to review and sign his or her name to, and
then submitted to a journal. In effect, it's like washing dirty money,"
explains Douglas Peters, a medical malpractice attorney.
Most
medical
journals
nowadays devote about a third of their space to
advertisements for drugs. According to The Wall Street Journal, drug
companies spend over $330,000,000 on advertising directed toward
doctors. medical journals quite literally rely on drug money for their
survival. "Drug
companies
spend
millions of dollars educating physicians. Drug
companies are the major advertisers in all medical journals. They fund
clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of their drugs and they
pay these researchers to speak at hospitals and medical schools. And
if a drug company that makes a cholesterol-lowering drug provides most
of the funds to conduct research on the effectiveness of that drug,
then there is a potential for bias, even if unwittingly, despite
independent monitoring committees that sometimes oversee these studies.
Drug companies provide sandwiches and doughnuts at hospital conferences
and for the doctors' lounges. They provide free samples of their
products. Drug companies also sponsor scientific meetings on the
importance of lowering cholesterol, often emphasizing the importance of
cholesterol-lowering drugs. These meetings are sometimes held in resorts, and doctors
who attend may even be given free transportation and expenses in
addition to their food and entertainment." An
example
of
a strong drug proponent who advocates chronic maintenance
administration of antidepressant medication is Dr.
Martin Keller, professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry at Brown
University. Keller has published numerous research articles, many of
them coauthored with other psychopharmacologists who take a similar
position on the treatment of depression. Appearing in prestigious
medical and psychiatric journals, Keller's articles have the appearance
of impartial academic publications. Yet, as described in Chapter 5, the
October 8, 1999, Boston Globe revealed that "Keller earned a total of
$842,000 last year [1998], according to financial records, and more
than half of his income came .. from pharmaceutical companies whose
drugs he touted in medical journals and at conferences." For example,
while publishing articles specifically endorsing Zoloft for the
chronic treatment of depression, Keller received $218,000 in 1998 alone
from Zoloft's manufacturer, Pfizer. "At the same
time," continued the Boston Globe, "Keller was receiving millions of
dollars in funding from the National Institute of Mental Health for
research on depression and ways to treat it." The Boston Globe said
Keller cited his NIMH-funded research on depression in an article in
which he made claims on behalf of drugs like Zoloft. See D. Kong and A.
Bass, "Case at Brown Leads to Review, NIMH Studies Tighter Rules on
Conflicts," Boston Globe, October 8,1999, pp. B1,B5. A
recent
survey
of consumer health-care choices in the United States found
that nearly one in four Americans utilize some form of alternative
medicine. This means that consumers are spending more than a billion
dollars a year in the United States on alternative therapies. Because
this trend toward increased interest in alternative medicine is having
a powerful economic impact, more and more physicians and health-care
providers are seeking information about alternative health care. There
are now several medical schools in the United States that are offering
courses to students on alternative medical treatments. Popular medical
journals are publishing articles that examine the reasons why patients
are seeking alternative health care and that explore the nature of
"unorthodox" treatments. New
breakthroughs
about
bone health are happening every day. There's always
some cutting-edge technology described in the medical journals. There
are loads of lab tests and diagnostic criteria and better treatments
under development, and some of them will no doubt revolutionize the way
we care for low bone
density. The demand for these advances is high (every baby boom
woman has a vested interest), so there's plenty of money in it for
those who do the best work. By all means keep up with the news, which
will inevitably outpace even an up-to-date book like this one, and
choose the best new options to maximize your health. In
the
late
1970s and 1980s, I added another interest—food politics.
Medical research alone cannot change what Americans eat. Vital research
paid for with taxpayers' money remains locked in the medical journals
unless it is communicated to the public and implemented by government
policy. To help shape that policy, I chaired the Nutrition Coordinating
Committee at the NIH for nine consecutive years and co-chaired the
Interagency Committee for Human Nutrition Research at the Office of
Science and Technology Policy at the White House for five years. These
committees influenced nutrition and food policy throughout the federal
government. Aghast
at
Hoxsey's
upset victory, Dr. Fishbein decided to lift the controversy
outside medical journals to center stage in the public media. He
jointly authored "Blood Money" in the American Weekly, the Sunday
magazine supplement of the Hearst newspaper chain. The installment on
cancer quackery
was part of a lavish six-part "Medical Hucksters" series. It strutted
Fishbein's purple prose and yellow journalism,
lacerating his favorite target, Harry Hoxsey. The tirade smoldered
against a lurid four-color painting of a frock-coated Dickensian
figure. Wearing white ...chemotherapy research
has made the headlines of the majority of medical journals with all the
academic fanfare, applause, prizes and the solemn acceptance of the
experts with authority on the subject. The researchers are happy, their
universities and institutes have obtained more money for their
impressive advances, the industry is bulging with profits and the
patients are dying. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that their
(pseudo) therapeutic value borders on the criminal. My professional
pride cries out for the academic recognition of the establishment, that
the authorities of the oncological branch would give me their blessing.
My conscience as a physician nevertheless demands that I offer to my
patients sufficient resources so that he or she can decide which route
to follow in their struggle to recover health. Overview:
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