When it comes to making health care decisions, which can deeply impact your life, you need access to truthful, unbiased information and science, or at least access to a physician who does.
Yet true, independent research -- the foundation upon which the modern medical system is supposed to be based -- is becoming an increasingly rare commodity … if it's not already extinct.
In a scathing expose in Scientific American,1 journalism professor Charles Seife shows very clearly how the pharmaceutical industry is funneling money to prominent research scientists conducting studies on their products, and no one – not the researchers, not their funding sources, not scientific institutions and not even the government – appears able (or willing) to stop it.
Take Avandia, the diabetes drug that is now known to have killed tens of thousands of people and significantly increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Research from the Mayo Clinic revealed that 90 percent of scientists who wrote favorable articles about the drug had financial ties to GlaxoSmithKline, the drug's maker.2 A committee of independent experts still recommended that Avandia remain on the market, despite its clear risks, and a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight board voted 8 to 7 to accept the advice.
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