Financial Ties Bind Medical Societies to Drug and Device Makers
Professional groups like the Heart Rhythm Society write guidelines on treatments and the use of medical devices, but researchers say their acceptance of sponsorships and grants from drug and device makers poses a conflict of interest that many patients never consider.
This article is part of an ongoing investigation:
Dollars for Doctors: How Industry Money Reaches Physicians
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61 comments
Needlesticksafety.org
May 17, 2011, 6:42 p.m.
Yes Jorge, vote with your feet…and, use those feet to run as fast as you can to watch blood drawn from your baby. Nobody watches, because the grandfathered-in needles are too scary to use on infants—scary for even the most seasoned professionals. Look what the safety expert for Premier, Inc., the world’s largest purchasing org. has to say about it. http://www.needlesticksafety.org
D.
May 17, 2011, 8:10 p.m.
Sounds like a plan to me!
Clark Baker
May 18, 2011, 10:55 a.m.
How do you “vote with your feet” when these behaviors are considered the medical “standard of care.” Several of our clients tried to run, but no other hospitals are willing to deviate from the protocols that they’re trying to run from. And doctors who DO deviate risk the loss of their medical licenses and practices if they are discovered - and insurers won’t pay for treatment that deviates either. So unless you do not buy insurance and only seek treatments in other countries, you’re stuck. If you have children that you intend to enroll in school, chances are that you cannot unless you’ve abided by CDC vaccine schedules. And if you or your child gets sick from the vaccines, the Justice Department will defend the vaccine manufacturer and force you to prove that the vaccine harmed your child. But don’t believe me - read the book Vaccine Epidemic (2011) for a description from parents who endured these battles.
For families with children and ordinary means, there is no place to run.
D.
May 18, 2011, 11:42 a.m.
You can go to http://www.nvic.org and print out the papers you need to keep your children in school without vaccinations. I think WA State is the only one (right now) where it has been voted illegal to claim a religious or other exemption, except medical. How, exactly, would parents get a medical exemption from vaccines when it’s the medical world who insists on them?? It makes no sense.
Also, it is now universal law that no drug manufacturer, or the provider of such drugs and vaccines, can be held liable for their damage. So if a parent knows, but has no “scientific” proof that a vaccine or drug has harmed or killed their child (or even an adult), there is absolutely no recourse in the crooked justice system we have today. Not that there ever really was. The DOJ, next to our own gubment, is the most devious, crooked bunch of bastards on the face of the earth. Don’t ever expect anything but grief from any of them. And it’s only going to get worse.
Needlesticksafety.org
May 18, 2011, 11:48 a.m.
RE: Vaccinations done with needles - without needles no vaccinations. The needle manufacturers have a connection to the government that is unholy, as BD and the other giant manufacturers manipulate the environment to insure they are the suppliers, even when they are using dangerous needles that should be outlawed. Injection and blood collection needles need to be made safe—therefore, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act 2000.
Daniel Webster
May 18, 2011, 9:47 p.m.
The medical profession has studied science and medicine extensively, but seems to have little (if any) study of ethics. The Oath of Hippocrates has a different meaning when you graduate with a mountain of medical school debt and now have malpractice insurance to cover, but then a culture of corruption that uses language to describe themselves as somehow being above the influence seems to prevail among doctors of all stripes.
Rbert Finney PhD
May 26, 2011, 9:23 a.m.
Special interests have hijacked healthcare to promote their products and companies to the detriment of the patients and taxpayers who fund it.
Original investigation, “Death Panel Court Order: Judge Nullifies Informed Consent,” is posted on http://judicialactivism.info/1st Thumbnail - Judges Death Panel.pdf.
By ruling that a surgeon is not liable for failing to disclose sufficient information to allow a reasonable person to make informed consent, San Diego Court Commissioner Ernest M. Gross turned a taxpayer-funded court of law into a death panel.
Judge Gross presided over a two hour trial to determine whether Dr. Stephen L. Wheeler had a duty to disclose his human subject experiment on 402 patients in whom he had placed 803 dental implants without their informed consent. A former patient, whose implant had failed, filed a complaint against Dr. Wheeler for intentionally concealing that he had been used as a human lab rat.
Dr. Wheeler had collaborated with Dentsply (multi-billion dollar dental device manufacturer) to conduct a six-year human experiment on the company’s rarely tested Frialit-2 cylinder implant to determine failure rates. Dr. Wheeler’s consent form did not contain disclosures, as required by California law. Many of the implants failed. The implant was removed from the market.
During the trial, Judge Gross gave a long lecture about the importance of fully informed consent as applied to his own hip implant surgery.
Robert D. Finney, Ph.D.
humberto
May 30, 2011, 11:55 a.m.
I wonder if over there know something about some anti-cancer and my mother is very bad thanks
DPh
June 3, 2011, 11:39 a.m.
D, are you a complete idiot? Don’t vaccinate your children? Let’s just run around and let measles, mumps, smallpox, and whooping cough just run rampant. Let’s return to the dark ages.
As far as drug companies, and medical device sales and marketing? It’s outrageous. At some point they have to be reigned in. I see doctors switching to much more expensive pharmaceuticals the second a patent expires. Many of the new pharmaceuticals are simply controlled release forms or some isomer of the previous product. Advertisers should be forced to disclose the average sales cost for a month’s supply of any medication. Doctors or medical societies should be advocates for cost effective care, not how much money can we make.
Clark Baker
June 3, 2011, 1 p.m.
DPh - Your response to D suggests that you are either a pharmaceutical marketing rep or less knowledgeable than you want people to think. Your anonymity is also suspect.
Some FACTS (e.g. not marketing):
1. ALL infectious diseases - including measles, mumps, rubella and the flu became statistically irrelevant in the US by about 1955 - years before many of these vaccines went on the market.
JAMA. 1999;281(1):61-66 (doi:10.1001/jama.281.1.61)
2. If tracked like real diseases, preventable adverse drug reactions (ADRs) - including vaccines - would rank between the 4th and 6th leading cause of death in the United States – far above the diseases that advocates like you make noise about.
JAMA. 1998;279(15):1200-1205 (doi:10.1001/jama.279.15.1200).
3. When the healthcare and drug industries harm patients, their profits INCREASE!
JAMA, December 21 1994-vol 272, No. 23 “Error in Medicine,” Leape.
So why would you defend or BELIEVE a drug industry that has paid $9 billion since 2004 to settle THOUSANDS of criminal and civil complaints related to the illegal marketing of drugs that, according to AMA reports, kill or injure more than a million Americans ANNUALLY?
These VERIFIABLE facts mean that Americans are more likely to be injured or killed by drugs than by the diseases they allegedly fight or prevent – a fact that wouldn’t generate funding much from the NIH, CDC or drug companies if disclosed.
So while someone here may qualifiy as a “complete idiot,” I’m not sure that D is as qualified as his detractors.
Speaking as a career investigator (retired LAPD), I’ve found that epithets and insults are generally employed by those who have no evidentiary leg to stand on. D’s heresy can only offend those who BELIEVE your theology.
Clark Baker
Principal Investigator
OMSJ, Inc.
D.
June 3, 2011, 1:34 p.m.
Boy, you really ARE a believe in allopathy, aren’t you, DPh? Well, I’m not a believer. I’m amongst the growing, actually burgeoning sector of the population of America who is beginning to see through the crapola of the modern medical business/industry, and seeing it for what it really is.
If you would have bothered to look at the web site I provided, you might see the light yourself. People like you, however, are so entrenched in allopathy they can see nothing beyond that narrow scope. When you get taken to the cleaners and are on 26 prescription medications and have collateral damage from the childhood “necessary” vaccinations which are nothing but a boatload of toxic junk which never did anyone any good, you might see that I’m right in my assessments. Until then, sayonara. You’ll just never understand the enormity of how you’ve been hoodwinked by the current, broken medical dogmatic system.