Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Bush Drug Industry Shill

A recent article in The Washington Post revealed that in pharmaceutical drug industry-funded trials for antipsychotic medications, "nine in 10 showed that the best drug was the one made by the company funding the study."

"..... it appears that whichever company sponsors the trial produces the better antipsychotic drug," according to psychiatrist John Davis and other experts reporting in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Doctors rely on these studies to determine what drugs to use. And, reliance on industry-sponsored studies is not limited to psychiatry but other areas of medicine as well.

The better the results of the study, the more justification for a costlier drug or treatment.

So why not non-industry funded studies in order to assure that patients receive the best low-cost medications and treatments?

Uwe Reinhardt, a political economist at Princeton, said support for publicly-funded studies runs into resistance, however, as "drug companies, device manufacturers and even physicians are reluctant to delve into questions of cost-effectiveness because such inquiries may find that the latest, most expensive treatment is not worth the cost."

Reinhardt further says...."I have come to believe a lot of inefficiency is quite deliberate and supported by Congress. One person's inefficiency is another person's income."

Instead of working to fix these problems, President Bush is blitzing the country yet again, shilling for the budget-busting multi-billion dollar seniors drug program.

The profit-bloated drug industry wins, the taxpayers lose. Yet again.

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