Proof that Cholesterol Guidelines A Gift For Merck, Pfizer

From: tcomeau (tunderbar_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/15/04 

Date: 15 Jul 2004 13:45:24 -0700

"Robert" <Robert@hotmail.com> wrote in message

<snip>
 
> Doctors are setting guidelines moron. These are the standard of care
> guidelines and failure to perform the standard of care makes one non
> compliant with the standard of care. Anything happens to the patient then
> the doctor is liable in a court of law with not following the standard of
> care.
> Only doctors are allowed to set those standards usually based on evidence
> and not by non doctor idiots like yourself trying to do so.

Doctors? More like industry whores.
******
CHOLESTEROL GUIDELINES

Drug panelists' links under fire
    
BY DELTHIA RICKS AND RONI RABIN
STAFF WRITERS

July 15, 2004

Guidelines published by a government panel earlier this week, calling
for aggressive use of statin medications to lower cholesterol in
people at high risk of heart attacks, failed to list panelists' links
to pharmaceutical companies, many of which manufacture statin drugs.

Of the nine panelists, six had received grants or consulting or
speakers' fees from companies that produce some of the most popular
statin medications on the market, according to published material from
2001. Those drugs include Pfizer's Lipitor; Bristol-Myers Squibb's
Pravachol, Merck's Lovastatin and AstraZeneca's Crestor.

Dr. James Cleeman, coordinator of the national Cholesterol Education
Program, a division of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute,
called the omission of financial disclosures an oversight. In response
to Newsday's inquiries, he said panelists' pharmaceutical company
relationships will be posted on the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute's Web site within the next few days.

Such financial links to drug companies were printed in the Journal of
the American Medical Association when the original guidelines were
published three years ago. Many of the same panelists returned to
produce this week's amendments to the rules, which were published in
the journal Circulation, a publication of the American Heart
Association. "We now understand, in the current climate, it is wise to
make that information [researchers' financial connections] as
transparent as possible," Cleeman said. "... There is certainly no
intent to obscure information."

Cardiologists expressed no doubts about the quality of the research
leading to the updated guidelines. But observers say the public
deserves to have as much information as possible about panelists who
are making such sweeping regulations. The guidelines also could serve
to improve the bottom line of major corporations.

"It should have been there," said Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiovascular
researcher at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio,referring to financial
disclosure information. He added that "it is hard to work in the lipid
field and not have gotten a grant from a pharmaceutical company.

"Certainly if it were me, I would have disclosed it. But it is
important to point out that these are reputable people," Nissen said
of the panelists. "They are leaders in the field, people of
integrity."

Nissen's research helped influence the new guidelines.

An estimated 36 million people in the United States are already on
statin therapy, drugs that earn pharmaceutical companies $20 billion a
year. The new rules by the Cholesterol Education Program essentially
establish a new standard of care for people with the worst forms of
cardiovascular disease.

The National Cholesterol Education Program is entirely
government-funded, Cleeman said, and operates on a budget of about $1
million a year. The program does not receive any money from
pharmaceutical companies, he said.

The program invites outside experts to serve as panelists and to
review scientific data that will be considered for treatment
guidelines. The information is further vetted by 90 to 100 outside
experts, including heart specialists from the American College of
Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

"There are multiple layers of review," Cleeman said.

Dr. H. Bryan Brewer, a physician-scientist at the National Heart, Lung
and Blood Institute, was one of the guidelines' authors. He was the
subject of a letter to the director of the National Institutes of
Health last week from a consumer watchdog, Public Citizen's Health
Research Group. The advocacy organization charged that Brewer had
failed to disclose his ties to AstraZeneca. Brewer, according to the
letter, had written a glowing report in a medical journal about
Crestor without disclosing that he is a paid consultant and had
presided over a company-sponsored symposium.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of watchdog group, said he wrote the letter
because NIH officials - and the public - should be aware of potential
conflicts of interest.

"The public has a right to know every amount," Wolfe said yesterday.

Panelist Dr. Sidney Smith of the American Heart Association said in an
interview that he has received consulting fees from Merck. But he said
he was only peripherally involved in the enrollment of patients in a
Merck-supported clinical trial about a year ago.

"One of the problems we have is that 80 to 90 percent of the evidence
from clinical trials comes from the need of drug companies to get new
drugs to market," he said. The Institute of Medicine - panels convened
by Congress to investigate urgent issues in health care - has
suggested a different approach to funding such research, he said.
Those suggestions include the allocation of "$17 billion from the
government to get evidence from treatment studies and not have to
depend on drug company money."

The failure to disclose financial information comes on the heels of
investigations by both the NIH and Food and Drug Administration to
root out any conflicts of interest among staff scientists involved in
outside consulting.

The guidelines published by the panel called for lowering cholesterol
to the lowest possible levels. For the sickest patients, that means a
low-density lipoprotein - LDL - of 70 milligrams or below. Doctors
never before have been asked to reduce patients' cholesterol to such a
level, though the trend toward lower numbers had become evident in
scientific studies in recent years.

"The guidelines are somewhat conservative and not that favorable to
industry," Nissen said. He added that the guidelines should not be
construed as a "a pro-industry document. There's a lot of information
in the document [calling for] lifestyle changes," too.
****

Greed!

TC

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