8 out of 9 Advisory Committe Docs Worked for Big Pharma

Did you know? This story is from a few years ago but I just wanted to share it again. Especially after the recent release of the new statin guidelines.

According to a report by USA Today on October 16, 2004 ("Cholesterol Guidelines Become a Morality Play") eight of the nine doctors who formed a committee in 2001 to advise the government on cholesterol guidelines for the public were making money from the very same companies that made the cholesterol lowering drugs that they were urging millions of Americans to take. For example, one of the committee members, Dr. H. Bryan Brewer, was the Chief of the Molecular Disease Branch at the National Institute of Health. He worked as a consultant or speaker for 10 different pharmaceutical companies, making over $100,000 over three years while he was on the committee, and sat on one of their boards (Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2004, "The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?"). Dr. Brewer left the NIH in 2005 in the midst of adverse publicity about potential conflicts of interest. Nassir Ghaemi, MD, a psychiatrist at Emory University, was quoted in the Emory Academic Exchange (February, 2007) as saying, "Critics say we are being influenced and don't realize it—that drug companies are smarter than we are and know a lot more about human psychology than we think, and they're probably right about that to some extent."

And we wonder why so many drugs today don't cure any more. They only treat symptoms and cause more side effects so more drugs can be used to treat more symptoms. We must take personal responsibility for our health. Let's talk!

Keith Abell, RPh MI