As the wife of a slim Texan with a cholesterol issue, and as a  lactation
consultant concerned about the influence of formula (pharmaceutical)  companies'
influence on baby feeding, related research, and policy, I was  enthralled by
a recent article (8-1-04), Outlook section, page  B3, in the Washington Post
"Why Should We Swallow What These Studies  Say?", by Jerome Kassirer, editor in
chief emeritus of the New England Journal  of Medicine and a professor at the
Tufts University School of Medicine. He is  the author of the forthcoming "On
the Take: How Medicine's Complicity With Big  Business Can Endanger Your
Health" (Oxford University Press).

The article is about the new lower guidelines on cholesterol levels  and the
supposedly consequent drastic increased need for statin usage, but, so  much
of the article can be easily related to our various concerns expressed here  on
Lactnet.

From the WP article:

"...in medicine, where decisions on treatment can have lasting  effects, mere
disclosure isn't enough. Patients need advice they can act on  without having
to calibrate how likely it is to be biased. Physicians and  scientists with
financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry should not just  have to disclose
conflicts -- they shouldn't be permitted to issue guidelines at  all.".....

..."In describing the use of disclosure in business circles, an economist
recently said, "It has become a truism on Wall Street that conflicts of interest
 are unavoidable. In fact, most of them only seem so, because avoiding them
makes  it harder to get rich. That's why full disclosure is so popular: It
requires no  substantive change." Disclosure covers up the question of bias with a
patina of  honesty. "................

_http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29456-2004Jul31.html_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29456-2004Jul31.html)

Author's e-mail:
[log in to unmask]


Debbie Tobin
RN BSN IBCLC LCCE
_LCAGW.org _ (http://www.lcagw.org/) Co-VP
Springfield, Virginia USA

In the Fairfax County  suburbs outside the Washington DC beltway

_BestBreastfeeding.Info_ (http://www.bestbreastfeeding.info/)



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