Report: Vaccine Advisers Had Financial Conflicts
By Susie Madrak Saturday Dec 19, 2009 7:00pm
Well! I'm feeling much safer now!
WASHINGTON — A new report finds that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a poor job of screening medical experts for financial conflicts when it hired them to advise the agency on vaccine safety, officials said Thursday.
Most of the experts who served on advisory panels in 2007 to evaluate vaccines for flu and cervical cancer had potential conflicts that were never resolved, the report said. Some were legally barred from considering the issues but did so anyway.
In the report, expected to be released Friday, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, found that the centers failed nearly every time to ensure that the experts adequately filled out forms confirming they were not being paid by companies with an interest in their decisions.
The report found that 64 percent of the advisers had potential conflicts of interest that were never identified or were left unresolved by the centers. Thirteen percent failed to have an appropriate conflicts form on file at the agency at all, which should have barred their participation in the meetings entirely, Mr. Levinson found. And 3 percent voted on matters that ethics officers had already barred them from considering.
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and now all of a sudden, H1N1 vaccines are available all across America. Walgreens and other pharmacies are pushing the vaccines as if there were an "everything must go" liquidation sale under way. Hurry, get your swine flu vaccine today before everybody figures out they're useless!
So which would you prefer Evet:
The story a couple of weeks ago was that not enough vaccines were available.
The story a couple of days ago was that some were recalled because it wasn't strong enough in the child dose.
Now the story is that maybe some folks on the panel might have COIs.
I work in medical research. I also caught the H1N1 virus a few weeks ago. Even tho the vaccine was offered to me before I caught it I declined it because I'm not in the at risk group because of my age, and I don't come in contact with many patients.
I was freakin' miserable. I hope you get it, not die from it, but get H1N1 so you understand why people like me work so goddam hard to keep people from dying from it.
BTW, FY, you never offer solutions, you're just a negative troll who has nothing better to do than trash everything you read about here.
If you're that unhappy about things, and have so much time to do nothing but bit(h, start your own blog.
and how will Obama clean that up?
a strict time limit. They're only in demand during the fear phase.
and what a surprise...NOT....
that once again we find that the
bush administration will cross that
line and commit any crime they could
get away with.
number of experts in this area it would be unrealistic to expect one could fill an advisory board with top talent without some conflicts of interest. Now the 3 per cent figure is interesting. If there were a hundred advisers that would mean 3 ignored the ethics adviser. How many were there? Thirty-three? That would mean one ignored the ethics adviser. I think I'll keep my outrage in check until I know a lot more. By the way, the annual murder rate in my county went up 200 per cent in 2009 over 2008. There was one in 2008. Two in 2009. Don't you love statistics!
The wealthy elite march in 3 essential columns ... Corporate, Academic and Political. In general, the goals are created by Corporate. Academic then provides studies and white papers that justify Corporate's goals. Political sells Academic's arguments to the public and if necessary, changes laws to accommodate and facilitate Corporate in getting what it wants. Press is necessary to filter Corporate, Academic and Political's communications to the public. Sadly, Corporate's partnerships with Political, Academic and Press have been very successful.
they help support the status quo, and they get rich doing it.
".. the annual murder rate in my county went up
200100 per cent in 2009 over 2008. There was one in 2008. Two in 2009."but I should have used from 2007 when there weren't any. Then the statistical increase is really astounding. In fact, incalculable.
same people who brought you vaccine induced autism and the fixed studies to deny it
a post like this would generate. Thanks Susie! I look forward to a post on some of the minor anomalies with climate science that completely invalidate AGW. Vaccines, incidentally, represent the single most important advance in public health since clean water and sanitary sewers. There is not the slightest shred of statistical evidence that links vaccines to autism.
but there are thousands of vaccine damaged kids that do.
"there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics" Twain
All studies done have been epidemiological and rely solely on statistics. All done have been done by researchers with conflicts of interests.
You can throw out your "studies" mantra all you want but it will not stop more parents and loved ones from experiencing what is happening due to over-zealousness and greed.
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review
But Twain probably got it wrong himself. Before Twain used it, it was noted by Leonard H. Courtney, (1832-1918), later Lord Courtney, in New York in 1895:
But no matter where it originated, Courtney and Twain both used it not as a truism, but humorously- and, in Twain's case, self-deprecatingly.
Shorter version: That quote doesn't mean what you think it means.
Oh those crazy scientists and their so-called "facts" and "evidence". I've got mommy-sense and my mommy sense says that correlation=causation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to call Dr. Jenny McCarthy for my medical advice.
The claim that vaccines cause autism was a lie concoct by Andrew Wakefield for his own enrichment. You are nothing but a willing accomplice to fraud.
"All studies done have been epidemiological and rely solely on statistics."
And you prefer a study that doesn't rely on statistics? How, pray tell, would you set up such a study and which children would you vaccinate and which ones would you leave unvaccinated? And even that study would require statistics.
Your statement immediately discredits anything you possibly have to say. It makes it obvious beyond doubt that you have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about.
"All studies done have been identifying possible risk factors and rely solely on analyzed numerical data."
It does make this person sound very smart when you substitute some words out for their meanings, ne?
In some cases (with this thiomersal nontraversy, for instance), studies with a control group, those who receive a vaccination without the preservative, have been performed and the results have been negative.
That science does not well understand the causes of autism spectrum disorder is very frustrating for parents indeed and my heart goes out to them. However, simply because we do not yet understand many of the causes and risk factors involved in ASD does not give anyone permission to fill that gap in with whatever fairy tale most appeals to them.
Science doesn't work that way. As much as I thought the mercury in the vaccines was responsible, it turns out it wasn't. In addition; we have the same rate now of autism with mercury free vaccines as we did with the previous ones.
You can bribe a scientist, you can't bribe them all. And you can't bribe all of the researchers who contributed to the studies.
IRT the actual post, and not the diversion from above; This doesn't actually surprise me. COI's are usually self reported and if you did a study years ago that was funded by a company that currently you are on a committee overseeing work by that company you might not be aware of it.
Notice the qualifier: "potential conflicts of interest "
In no way am I saying that this shouldn't be looked at closer, what I'm saying is that this is a lazy story that makes headlines but doesn't actually reveal any dastardly info.
My suggestion to the NYT is 'next time, show work,'
This is not to mention that these advisers are not the ones performing comprehensive epidemiological studies for the US market. Nor are they the ones performing the comprehensive studies on vaccine usage done world-wide over the past 20 years which have, time and time again, failed to find a link between vaccinations and childhood autism.
The anti-vax crowd are just as crazy and deluded as the climate change deniers and 9/11 truthers
1.
Anti vax crowd? there is no anti vax-crowd. There IS, however, a "healthy distrust of giant pharmaceutical industry" crowd... ALL AROUND THE PLANET. Vaccines are important, but just too easy to use against populations. Read 'Eco Science' by John P. Holdren
2.
Climate change deniers? No-one is DENYING climate change. Climates DO change, because of natural occurences such as sunspot activity. (We do NOT have more influence on the climate than the sun does.) Oh yeah I forgot... human arrogance trumps even the power and importance of the sun. :P
ps - i see what you did there - AGW *deniers* holocaust *deniers*. Very slick.
3.
9/11 truthers wouldn't HAVE to exist if the US gov't wasn't so damned secretive about 9/11. They wouldn't exist if there was a legitimate inquiry done in to the myriad of discrepencies that were evident on that day.
This isn't even remotely surprising. Considering all the shenanigans which went on during the Bush administration, I'd be more surprised if a majority of vaccine advisers hadn't been discovered to have potential conflicts of interest! If anything, this was par for the course.
Maybe their poor screening and hiring was actually a precision maneuver.
ahhhhh jeez, conspiracy mongering on c&l? I'm very dissapointed Suzie, this is the same level of reasoning as anti-darwin or global climate change denialism. Please look up both sides of this unfortunate issue and educate yourself about the science.
After they said most people over 50 have some acquired immunity and weren't in the highest risk group, I decided to give it a pass. Others might disagree.
No topics seem more divisive among liberals than vaccine safety and illegal immigration. I think surveys would reveal a very interesting diversity of opinion among liberals on these topics.
What you want to bet that when this hits the MSM that they "forget" to mention that this happened during the Bush administration and instead blame it on Obama?
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