Americans' eroding confidence in the FDA: whom do you trust?
Confidence in the FDA has hit bottom. The latest survey on trust in the FDA comes from HarrisInteractive, who regularly surveys the public's faith in the regulator.
Consumers see the FDA's #1 job as "ensuring the safety and efficacy of new prescription drugs," cited by 61% of the public; however, 58% of people have a negative view of the FDA's role in this job, compared to only 35% who think positively about the FDA's performance in this key role.
This latest drop in confidence in the FDA is driven by the Heparin scare, blogged about here in Health Populi back in November 2007.
Other factors eroding confidence in the FDA include toy safety, food safety, the recent toothpaste scare, and perceived lags in approving necessary drugs.
Health Populi's Hot Points: Lack of trust in our institutions is driving people toward nodes of positive trust: first and foremost, to "people like me." I continue to refer to the Edelman Trust Barometer on this issue, a source the I trust.
People have lived with risk in daily life since Adam and Eve were tempted in the Garden of Eden. There is a rising wave of risks, at least as we perceive them, in our daily lives. The sub-prime mortgage crisis leads us to mistrust financial services companies. The rising price of gas drives us to mistrust oil companies. Health insurance denials for care and increasing health costs compel us to mistrust insurance companies and those who supply products to the industry.
Risk management requires us to seek information that helps us manage those risks on a daily basis. Increasingly, people are looking for trustworthy sources in new places, offline and online. But in the case of the FDA, which is charged with protecting the public's health, where else can we turn? Whether it's to assess E. coli or new meds or that new toy, we need a vigilant, productive, and effective FDA in our corner. And, for now, 2 in 3 Americans is frustrated with the agency that's supposed to protect them.
posted by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at
7:09 AM
1 Comments:
Have They Switched Sides?
The Food and Drug Administration originated in its primitive form at the time several decades ago to ensure the health and safety of the citizens of the United States. However, their focus seems to have changed, as they appear to have formed a pathological alliance with the pharmaceutical industry through the money the industry gives the FDA for various reasons, yet so large amounts of funds are issued to the FDA by the industry that it has resulted in possibly half of the FDA’s annual income. Results of this relationship, one could posit, have been the approval of unsafe drugs and lack of regulation and monitoring of the pharmaceutical industry that the FDA is obligated to perform, and have failed to do so as much as they should for our benefit.
And the intimacy between the two organizations seems to continue to progress, as illustrated with the new proposal by the FDA to allow the pharmaceutical industry reps to discuss their products with prescribers off-label, which means that the FDA may allow and accept the industry possibly creating harm to patients with this proposal due to uncertainty associated with unapproved uses of a drug promoted in this way.
A prescriber, upon their own discretion, can in fact prescribe a drug off-label, but historically, however, representatives from the pharmaceutical industry have been prohibited from suggesting this type of activity. In fact, it is a federal offense for such reps to speak off-label about the drugs they promote, and some have been penalized for this behavior in the past in the form of monetary settlements with the Department of Justice.
This FDA protocol that is being considered, called, “Good Reprint Practices”, would require reps to use what does not truly exist, which is truthful and authentic clinical trials when they do speak off-label to prescribers. This in itself lacks etiology for such discussions by reps, as most clinical trials are flawed due to the trials being possibly manufactured by the pharmaceutical companies of the meds involved in such trials. Additional trial deception involves ghostwriting and invalid authors of such trials. These facts can be validated and have been discovered by others.
Furthermore, this proposal is flawed in that most pharmaceutical reps lack clinical training and the ability to analyze data regarding this issue accurately is unlikely, for the most part, I surmise. This complicates the idea of this off-label concept due to the ignorance of the reps of the complexities of these once reliable and dependable methods of proof. In addition, the relaxation of previous restrictions regarding off-label promotion could prove to be a catalyst for reps to manipulate statements to prescribers for their own benefit in regards to their promoted meds. So, our previous safety association, the FDA, appears to be evolving into our harmful association by suggesting such practices with deliberate intent and reckless disregard for public health, so it seems. It’s unbelievable this proposal ever came into existence, with the delusional fallacy that it would be of benefit to patient health, most likely. Furthermore, this may complicate existing patient medication errors, such as in the elderly or dosing for children, complicated by the fact that many are unable to understand label instructions on their med. So there are enough problems with prescribing, and adding this FDA proposal would just make the situation worse.
However, there is freedom of speech. Perhaps another alternative would be to have clinically trained people discuss such issues with prescribers, instead of the reps, who, unlike those academically enriched, have the objective of increasing the market share of their promoted meds. Regardless, awareness needs to happen by the citizens involving tactics that are possibly deceptive such as this and many more activities by the pharmaceutical industry that are overall covert and tacit. As citizens, we have the right to insist of the pharmaceutical company to maintain focus on the interest of others besides themselves.
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being.”
---- Carl Jung
Dan Abshear
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Anonymous, At
May 14, 2008 7:50 AM
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