Ecoclimber
Senior Member
- Messages
- 1,011
I am just going to list the sites or reports. All of links or uploads in PDF file format. Someone else can massage all this information into a coherent report on the current state involving these issues with the IOM and our current ME/CFS Contract.
Quackwatch: Institute of Medicine Committee Issues Irresponsible "CAM" Report
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which provided funding for the report, limited who could be on the "CAM" Committee by barring all persons whom the project administrators perceived as critics of irrational “CAM” practices. These critics, including me, were also excluded from presenting meaningful testimony to the "CAM" Committee or participating in prepublication review of the report. Yet neither NCCAM nor IOM cared one bit that many of the "CAM" committee members have economic and/or occupational conflicts of interest or strong commitments to irrational "CAM" ideology [2]. Some have also served on an NCCAM council or received an NCCAM research grant.
Institute of Medicine FDA 510K Advisory Committee Fails to Meet US Fair Balanced Standards
WASHINGTON LEGAL FUND THAT FACA BARS FDA FROM CONSIDERING ADVICE FROM IOM
On February 27, 2012, FDA denied a Citizen Petition filed by WLF in June 2011 regarding compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Petitioned argued that FACA bars FDA from using any advice or recommendations provided by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee assembled for the purpose of considering an overhaul of the 510(k) medical device approval process. WLF argued that FDA’s use of recommendations from the IOM Committee would violate FACA § 15, which provides that an agency may not use any advice or recommendations developed by an IOM committee unless the committee’s composition complies with § 15(b)(1)’s requirement that membership be “fairly balanced.” WLF charged that the IOM Committee was not fairly balanced. Numerous persons and groups directly affected by the committee’s work were unrepresented on the committee. FDA responded that it was required to defer to IOM’s assertion that the committee adequately represented all points of view.
Petition uploaded
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/03/17.php
Yesterday's report by the Associated Press (below) sheds light on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and its members' conflicts of interest. The IOM has, until now, maintained a carefully cultivated image as an independent source of reliable, science-based expert opinions on matters affecting health care policies. Indeed, Congress and the public have assumed that pronouncements by the IOM are impartial and evidence-based. But that assumption is belied by the facts.
Critics point out that the IOM is hardly free from conflicts of interest and that their pronouncements more often than not favor pharmaceutical company interests. Most IOM members-physicians and bioethicists-are employees of major medical schools that have extensive financial ties to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Additionally, IOM members include executives at major pharmaceutical companies. IOM members receive millions of dollars in grants from both industry and NIH. Their financial interests present personal and institutional conflicts of interest--raising doubts about IOM members' ability to render an objective evaluation about controversial drugs, vaccines, and other issues affecting health care.
Two recent examples illustrate that IOM panels tend to issue pronouncements that favor industry interests and government policies that have been adopted under the influence of industry. An IOM panel gave a clean bill of health to two highly controversial vaccines which critics charge disregarded a body of scientific evidence showing the vaccines caused some of those vaccinated, irreparable harm.
2/3 Institute of Medicine AIDS research panel have Conflicts of Interst - Assoc Press
Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that two-thirds of a panel of experts appointed by the Institute of Medicine, to investigate a controversial AIDS study conducted in Uganda with funds from NIH, receive grants from NIH.
Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group
The American Council on Science and Health defends fracking, BPA, and pesticides. Guess who their funders are PDF
Natural News Reveals Vaccine Corruption at Institute of Medicine (IoM)
(NaturalNews) The Institute of Medicine is suddenly in the news following the release of its vaccine “adverse events” research which found that MMR vaccines actually cause measles, seizures and anaphylactic shock. The old media predictably distorted the story and used it to deceptively announce that “vaccines are not linked to autism!”
In falsely reporting this study from the IoM, however, the old media reporters never bothered to even read the adverse reactions report. Nor did they ask a few simple questions such as “Who is funding the Institute of Medicine? And what is the agenda of the IoM?
The not-so-dangerous zones?
An independent review panel found last week that the Center’s Great Lakes Danger Zones project was based on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that used insufficient data. But that’s hardly a surprise, according to the chief adviser for the original report.
The report, originally scheduled for release in July 2007, was undertaken by the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent group that advises the United States and Canada on the Great Lakes. The Center published the report in February 2008, after the CDC continued to delay its publication. The report’s findings include a warning that “more than 9 million people who live in the more than two dozen ‘areas of concern’ — including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee — may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.”
The Institute of Medicine, an 11-member panel that conducted the review, said the link between pollutants in the lakes and elevated health risks is an overstated conclusion not backed by enough evidence.
But Dr. Christopher De Rosa, former director of toxicology at the ATSDR, told the Center that these findings are hardly unexpected. The IOM study looked at the CDC report as a traditional epidemiological study, instead of what the report actually was — a compilation of existing information to be made available to the public, said De Rosa, who oversaw the original report and pushed for its release.
ANALYSIS: Who is essential? Insurers or consumers?
The Department of Health and Human Services has the responsibility of determining, with input from the respected nonprofit Institute of Medicine, just how comprehensive the coverage will have to be in each of those categories.
Insurers and employers who offer coverage to workers have been lobbying both the IOM and HHS to make the coverage requirements as narrow as possible. They want to continue marketing plans with skimpy benefits because they are less costly to employers and potentially more profitable to insurers. The problem with that approach, of course, is that millions of Americans will be forced to the join the ranks of the underinsured—already estimated at 30 million—if coverage they must buy is inadequate to meet their needs.
I wrote last month that an insurance industry-backed group called the Essential Health Benefits Coalition had been formed to persuade Obama administration officials to consider “affordability” first and foremost—not comprehensiveness—as they flesh out the benefit requirements. As is typical of such industry groups, this one was set up and is being run out of a big PR firm, Ogilvy Washington. The budget for it is ample enough to pay the salary of its executive director and spokesman, Brendan Daly, a former aide to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In contrast, the “I Am Essential” coalition doesn’t have a budget.
The group’s letter came a few days after another group of patient advocates—doctors and nurses—sent a letter to Sebelius making the same plea. Sent by Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that supports a single-payer health care system for the U.S., the letter also blasted the IOM panel for siding with the insurers suggesting that HHS consider affordability first.
“We protest the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that cost rather than medical need be the basis for defining the ‘essential benefits’ that insurance policies must cover,” the doctors and nurses wrote. “The IOM proposal would base the required coverage on the benefits typical of plans currently offered by small businesses – enshrining these skimpy plans as the new standard. These bare-bones policies come with a long list of uncovered services and saddle enrollees with unaffordable co-payments and deductibles… If adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services, this recommendation will sacrifice many lives and cause much suffering. We call on Secretary Sebelius and President Obama to reject them.”
The group went on to suggest that IOM recommendations would shift costs from corporate and government payers onto families already burdened by illness, a strategy it contends will not lower costs because it would result in patients delaying or foregoing needed care. “Delaying care often creates even higher costs,” they wrote.
Please Note: There will be further additions to the list:
Quackwatch: Institute of Medicine Committee Issues Irresponsible "CAM" Report
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which provided funding for the report, limited who could be on the "CAM" Committee by barring all persons whom the project administrators perceived as critics of irrational “CAM” practices. These critics, including me, were also excluded from presenting meaningful testimony to the "CAM" Committee or participating in prepublication review of the report. Yet neither NCCAM nor IOM cared one bit that many of the "CAM" committee members have economic and/or occupational conflicts of interest or strong commitments to irrational "CAM" ideology [2]. Some have also served on an NCCAM council or received an NCCAM research grant.
Institute of Medicine FDA 510K Advisory Committee Fails to Meet US Fair Balanced Standards
WASHINGTON LEGAL FUND THAT FACA BARS FDA FROM CONSIDERING ADVICE FROM IOM
On February 27, 2012, FDA denied a Citizen Petition filed by WLF in June 2011 regarding compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Petitioned argued that FACA bars FDA from using any advice or recommendations provided by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee assembled for the purpose of considering an overhaul of the 510(k) medical device approval process. WLF argued that FDA’s use of recommendations from the IOM Committee would violate FACA § 15, which provides that an agency may not use any advice or recommendations developed by an IOM committee unless the committee’s composition complies with § 15(b)(1)’s requirement that membership be “fairly balanced.” WLF charged that the IOM Committee was not fairly balanced. Numerous persons and groups directly affected by the committee’s work were unrepresented on the committee. FDA responded that it was required to defer to IOM’s assertion that the committee adequately represented all points of view.
Petition uploaded
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/03/17.php
Yesterday's report by the Associated Press (below) sheds light on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and its members' conflicts of interest. The IOM has, until now, maintained a carefully cultivated image as an independent source of reliable, science-based expert opinions on matters affecting health care policies. Indeed, Congress and the public have assumed that pronouncements by the IOM are impartial and evidence-based. But that assumption is belied by the facts.
Critics point out that the IOM is hardly free from conflicts of interest and that their pronouncements more often than not favor pharmaceutical company interests. Most IOM members-physicians and bioethicists-are employees of major medical schools that have extensive financial ties to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Additionally, IOM members include executives at major pharmaceutical companies. IOM members receive millions of dollars in grants from both industry and NIH. Their financial interests present personal and institutional conflicts of interest--raising doubts about IOM members' ability to render an objective evaluation about controversial drugs, vaccines, and other issues affecting health care.
Two recent examples illustrate that IOM panels tend to issue pronouncements that favor industry interests and government policies that have been adopted under the influence of industry. An IOM panel gave a clean bill of health to two highly controversial vaccines which critics charge disregarded a body of scientific evidence showing the vaccines caused some of those vaccinated, irreparable harm.
2/3 Institute of Medicine AIDS research panel have Conflicts of Interst - Assoc Press
Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that two-thirds of a panel of experts appointed by the Institute of Medicine, to investigate a controversial AIDS study conducted in Uganda with funds from NIH, receive grants from NIH.
Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of a Pro-Industry Science Group
The American Council on Science and Health defends fracking, BPA, and pesticides. Guess who their funders are PDF
Natural News Reveals Vaccine Corruption at Institute of Medicine (IoM)
(NaturalNews) The Institute of Medicine is suddenly in the news following the release of its vaccine “adverse events” research which found that MMR vaccines actually cause measles, seizures and anaphylactic shock. The old media predictably distorted the story and used it to deceptively announce that “vaccines are not linked to autism!”
In falsely reporting this study from the IoM, however, the old media reporters never bothered to even read the adverse reactions report. Nor did they ask a few simple questions such as “Who is funding the Institute of Medicine? And what is the agenda of the IoM?
The not-so-dangerous zones?
An independent review panel found last week that the Center’s Great Lakes Danger Zones project was based on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that used insufficient data. But that’s hardly a surprise, according to the chief adviser for the original report.
The report, originally scheduled for release in July 2007, was undertaken by the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent group that advises the United States and Canada on the Great Lakes. The Center published the report in February 2008, after the CDC continued to delay its publication. The report’s findings include a warning that “more than 9 million people who live in the more than two dozen ‘areas of concern’ — including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee — may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.”
The Institute of Medicine, an 11-member panel that conducted the review, said the link between pollutants in the lakes and elevated health risks is an overstated conclusion not backed by enough evidence.
But Dr. Christopher De Rosa, former director of toxicology at the ATSDR, told the Center that these findings are hardly unexpected. The IOM study looked at the CDC report as a traditional epidemiological study, instead of what the report actually was — a compilation of existing information to be made available to the public, said De Rosa, who oversaw the original report and pushed for its release.
ANALYSIS: Who is essential? Insurers or consumers?
The Department of Health and Human Services has the responsibility of determining, with input from the respected nonprofit Institute of Medicine, just how comprehensive the coverage will have to be in each of those categories.
Insurers and employers who offer coverage to workers have been lobbying both the IOM and HHS to make the coverage requirements as narrow as possible. They want to continue marketing plans with skimpy benefits because they are less costly to employers and potentially more profitable to insurers. The problem with that approach, of course, is that millions of Americans will be forced to the join the ranks of the underinsured—already estimated at 30 million—if coverage they must buy is inadequate to meet their needs.
I wrote last month that an insurance industry-backed group called the Essential Health Benefits Coalition had been formed to persuade Obama administration officials to consider “affordability” first and foremost—not comprehensiveness—as they flesh out the benefit requirements. As is typical of such industry groups, this one was set up and is being run out of a big PR firm, Ogilvy Washington. The budget for it is ample enough to pay the salary of its executive director and spokesman, Brendan Daly, a former aide to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In contrast, the “I Am Essential” coalition doesn’t have a budget.
The group’s letter came a few days after another group of patient advocates—doctors and nurses—sent a letter to Sebelius making the same plea. Sent by Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that supports a single-payer health care system for the U.S., the letter also blasted the IOM panel for siding with the insurers suggesting that HHS consider affordability first.
“We protest the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that cost rather than medical need be the basis for defining the ‘essential benefits’ that insurance policies must cover,” the doctors and nurses wrote. “The IOM proposal would base the required coverage on the benefits typical of plans currently offered by small businesses – enshrining these skimpy plans as the new standard. These bare-bones policies come with a long list of uncovered services and saddle enrollees with unaffordable co-payments and deductibles… If adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services, this recommendation will sacrifice many lives and cause much suffering. We call on Secretary Sebelius and President Obama to reject them.”
The group went on to suggest that IOM recommendations would shift costs from corporate and government payers onto families already burdened by illness, a strategy it contends will not lower costs because it would result in patients delaying or foregoing needed care. “Delaying care often creates even higher costs,” they wrote.
Please Note: There will be further additions to the list:
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