Jean McMahon

Clinical Trials Seen Shifting Overseas

A Tufts University study released in mid-2003 indicates that increasing numbers of clinical trials for U.S.-produced pharmaceutical are being conducted outside the United States, mainly by contract research organizations. This process speeds up clinical trials, but raises ethical issues of the possible coercion or exploitation of more vulnerable and naive patient populations.

Income Stable, Poverty Up, Numbers of Americans with and without Health Insurance Rise

In August 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States. It showed that, between 2002 and 2003, real median household income remained unchanged at

Political Context of the World Health Organization: Sugar Industry Threatens to Scupper the WHO

43,318; the official poverty rate rose from 12.1 to 12.5 percent; the number of people with health insurance increased by 1.0 million to 243.3 million; the number without such coverage rose by 1.4 million to 45.0 million; and the percentage of the nations population without coverage grew from 15.2 to 15.6 percent.

How can we improve medical reporting? Let me count the ways.

The Sugar Association, representing the U.S. sugar industry, is highly critical of a WHO report on guidelines for healthy eating, which suggests that sugar should account for no more than 10 percent of a healthy diet. The association has demanded that Congress end its funding of the World Health Organization unless the WHO withdraws the guidelines, and the association and six other big food industry groups have also asked the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to use his influence to get the WHO report withdrawn. The WHO strongly rejects the sugar lobbys criticisms.

Industry-funded breast cancer trials show more positive results.

Gary Schwitzer, former medical correspondent at CNN and now a professor of journalism, listed “10 troublesome trends in TV health news,” making the important point that most people today get their health information from the media, and from TV in particular. In this article, the author presents Schwitzers list and expands it with 10 more troublesome trends. Good health reporting should provide a straightforward, balanced, comprehensible summary of health issues that provides context to information-hungry consumers; it should rarely be sensational, but always skeptical. And there should be a lot more of it.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Africa: A “Disastrous” Record:

New research on pharmaceutical-industry sponsorship of clinical research in breast cancer shows that treatment trials funded by the industry are more likely to show positive results than studies sponsored by other sources. There are also major differences in trial design when drug companies are the funders.

Science Gets Sacked

In their 60th anniversary year, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank will attempt to highlight their “assistance” to Africa. But in reality, since the 1970s, these institutions have gradually become the chief architects of policies that are responsible for the worst inequalities and the explosion of poverty in the world, especially in Africa. When they began to intervene on that continent in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their stated goal was to “accelerate development.” But the actual record is just disastrous, as this article reveals.

Bush Supersizes Effort to Weaken the World Health Organization

The Bush administrations obsession with abstinence-only approaches to AIDS prevention is leading to attacks on the notion of safe sex, manipulation of educational materials, loss of funding and other assaults on HIV-prevention organizations, and manipulation of scientific research itself. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once a partner to HIV experts, has become a case study in the pitched battle between science and ideology.

Anthrax versus the FLU

Obesity has reached global epidemic levels, and two-thirds of Americans are now either obese or overweight. But the U.S. government, along with the powerful food industry, is trying to thwart the World Health Organizations efforts, through its proposed Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health, to make even the most commonsense recommendations on diet.

Health as an Essential Human Need, a Right of Citizenship, and a Public Good: Health for All is Possible and Necessary International Forum for the Defense of the Health of People

As state governments in the United States slash their public health budgets, federal money is pouring in for bioterror preparedness.