{"id":40587,"date":"2013-10-07T10:45:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T14:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=40587"},"modified":"2013-10-07T10:49:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T14:49:18","slug":"why-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2013\/10\/07\/why-indeed\/","title":{"rendered":"why indeed?…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pharmaceutical firms paid to attend meetings of panel that advises FDA<\/a><\/div>\n
Washington Post<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
By Peter Whoriskey<\/div>\n
October 6, 2013<\/div>\n

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A scientific panel that shaped the federal government’s policy for testing the safety and effectiveness of painkillers was funded by major pharmaceutical companies that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to affect the thinking of the Food and Drug Administration, according to hundreds of e-mails obtained by a public records request. The e-mails show that the companies paid as much as $25,000 to attend any given meeting of the panel, which had been set up by two academics to provide advice to the FDA on how to weigh the evidence from clinical trials. A leading FDA official later called the group “an essential collaborative effort”…<\/div>\n
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Emails point to ‘troubling’ relationship between drug firms, regulators<\/a><\/div>\n
Milwaukee·Wisconsin Journal Sentinel<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
By John Fauber<\/div>\n
October 6, 2013<\/div>\n

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Federal health industry regulators and executives of companies that make pain drugs have held private meetings at expensive hotels at least once a year since 2002 through an organization funded by the drug companies, according to emails obtained through public records requests and provided to the Journal Sentinel\/MedPage Today. Each year a handful of drug companies have paid up to $35,000 each to send a representative to meetings of IMMPACT, where they could discuss clinical trial testing procedures with officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies. IMMPACT’s stated goal is to improve the design of clinical trials conducted to develop new pain treatments. The emails raise concerns about a pay-for-play arrangement in which drug companies were able to buy access to invitation-only meetings where they could meet with FDA officials and affect FDA pain drug policy, said Michael Carome, director of health research for the watchdog group Public Citizen… <\/div>\n
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Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials<\/a><\/div>\n

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The mission of the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials [IMMPACT] is to develop consensus reviews and recommendations for improving the design, execution, and interpretation of clinical trials of treatments for pain. The first IMMPACT meeting was held in November 2002, and there have been a total of sixteen consensus meetings on clinical trials of treatments for pain – fourteen on trials for chronic pain in adults, one on trials for acute pain in adults, and one on trials for pediatric acute and chronic pain. Invited participants come from academia, regulatory agencies [US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency], US National Institutes of Health, US Veterans Administration, consumer support and advocacy groups, and industry. The disciplines represented at meetings varies but has included anesthesiology, clinical pharmacology, internal medicine, law, neurology, nursing, oncology, outcomes research, psychology, rheumatology, and surgery. For all IMMPACT meetings, an attempt is made to include broad representation while limiting the size of the meeting to promote vigorous and frank discussion and debate…<\/div>\n
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These stories are so common that it’s easy to become inured to hearing them and let them just drift away:<\/p>\n\n\n
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in·ure [in(y)oor]<\/div>\n
verb<\/div>\n