Re: More statin adverse effects to become obvious?

From: Sharon Hope (shope_at_anet.net)
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 20:44:48 -0800

"Paul E. Lehmann" <plehmann@fred.net> wrote in message
news:1101bpfpvrnmjde@corp.supernews.com...
> Sharon Hope wrote:
>
> .............
>>
>> They're making progress. The NIH investigators, as of yesterday, can no
>> longer take 400% over their NIH salary in cash and stock options from the
>> company whose drug they are evaluating for FDA approval.
>>
>> What's next? Maybe the FDA might start enforcing safety of approved
>> drugs......
>>
>
> When I was working for the National Weather Service, a friend of mine (a
> computer programmer) left the Weather Service and took a job (as computer
> programmer) with the FDA. He was forced to get rid of all his pharma
> stocks that he owned.
>
> This is really amazing since then (about 5 years ago) - and probably even
> now, scientists could / can work for the FDA, leave the government and go
> to work for the Pharma industry and return to work for the FDA. It is a
> revolving door in which scientist can leave the government, work on drugs
> in the private sector and then come back to the FDA and fast track the
> very
> drugs their company was working on. They can then go back to the private
> sector and continue to repeat this cycle indefinitely. They enforce
> conflict of interest policies for their technical people but not the top
> "Professionals".

Yeah, the LA Times did a story on the NIH a few years ago - named names and
showed photos of NIH managers in charge of drug trials where people died,
and more died after they recommended approval to the FDA - and the story
also detailed the big bucks and stock options these same NIH managers
received from the company that produced the drug they were investigating.

BTW, the NIH principal investigator for the Statin Study accepts absolutely
nothing from the pharm cos - not even the statins for the study. There are
ethical NIH investigators.

Now that the NIH is changing their ethics policy, there will be more.

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