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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12050

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

Floor Statement of U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa Ranking Member of the Committee on Finance Intimidation of Scientists
PharmaLive 2007 Nov 16
http://pharmalive.com/news/index.cfm?articleID=493318&categoryid=43


Notes:

Full statement can be downloaded via link on PharmaLive site


Full text:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2007—Sen. Chuck Grassley has released a floor statement and committee report on his website regarding the intimidation of scientists. The report is attached.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Mr. President, just about three years ago on November 18, 2004, I convened a hearing on the worldwide withdrawal of Vioxx, a blockbuster pain medication.

That hearing turned the spotlight on systemic problems at the Food and Drug Administration.

We found that the FDA maintained a cozy relationship with the drug industry and suppressed scientific dissent regarding agency actions on drug-safety.

At that Vioxx hearing, we also heard about Merck using its power, influence, and access to try and discredit FDA safety expert, Dr. David Graham.

Merck also tried to intimidate Stanford researcher Dr. Gurkirpal Singh. The company warned him to stop asking for more safety data on Vioxx, despite the fact he was one of their consultants.

What is troubling is that three years later, I am here with my colleague, Senator Baucus, to talk about another case where pharmaceutical executives used power, influence, and access to intimidate a medical researcher.

In essence, another company wanted to put an end to another scientist who was voicing concerns about the cardiovascular risks associated with a drug.

In this case, we are talking about the diabetes drug, Avandia.

Today, Senator Baucus and I are releasing a staff report showing how executives at GlaxoSmithKline intimidated Dr. John Buse, a medical researcher at the University of North Carolina.

Together, our respective staffs reviewed documents provided by the company and others, and they found bothersome internal emails that reveal how these pharmaceutical executives think.

In these emails, high level company officials discussed the possibility of threats against Dr. Buse.

These threats included the possibility of filing a lawsuit.

Company executives called Dr. Buse an “Avandia Renegade” and had him sign a retraction letter they wanted to give to financial analysts.

These analysts were evaluating the company’s products for investors.

So what we have here are three cases where companies intimidated researchers who dared to express concerns about risky drugs. And in the case of both Vioxx and Avandia the drugs actually turned out to carry some serious risks.

What I am here to say today, is that attacks on medical researchers by the pharmaceutical industry must stop. And stop now.

Until this practice ends, I want to let America’s scientists know that I am very interested in their concerns.

Scientists should feel free to contact my office if a pharmaceutical company threatens their career or attacks their reputation when they raise the alarm about a possibly dangerous drug.

They can also anonymously provide information and documents by mail or by fax to the Committee. Here’s the fax number: 202-228-2131.

I ask unanimous consent that this report be printed in the record.

Committee On Finance
219 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-6200
(202) 224-4515

Downloads
prg111507b.pdf

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909