http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2003_july17.html

July 17, 2003

SCREAM OF THE WEEK

MORE SCANDAL IN THE PATHETIC WORLD OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

By RFD Editor, Nicholas Regush

I can smell the stink coming from across the Atlantic. Documents reveal that dozens of the British Government’s highly influential advisors on critical health and environmental issues are linked closely to drug and biotech companies. Some of these "experts," according to The Observer, actually suggest there is nothing wrong with this behavior. They therefore reveal themselves as colossal dimwits when they think that having such a link does not appear to compromise their integrity. They must be from the distant planet, Tooth Fairy.

Read the piece in THE OBSERVER and try to keep your head from shaking so much that it drops on the floor. It is maddening, but on the other hand, it is simply more of the same. What goes on in Britain goes on everywhere else. The U.S. experience is particularly noteworthy. Government advisory committees at both the state and federal levels are loaded with industry brownnosers and coin collectors. In the area of vaccines, for example, it is well known that many advisors have their spines fused to the drug industry.

And this just goes on and on. More and more medical journals are reporting on this pathetic sort of relationship. And even the sycophants working in the mass media cannot afford any longer to overlook how medical scientists have their brains, if not their self-respect, drained by industry. Yes, I know, the promise of a free trip to Hawaii or Finland is just too much to resist.

It is bad enough that so many scientists sell themselves to the highest (or lowest) bidder, but to keep on claiming that having financial links will do nothing to their "impartiality" suggests that a few screws are definitely missing.