The Wall Road Journal ran a letter co-authored by Charley Hooper and me at the moment (print model tomorrow.) I’ve hesitated to cite greater than 2 paragraphs however I believe my contract that permits full citation solely after 30 days applies to my paid work, not my free work. So I’ll take the possibility and quote the entire thing.
As you observe in your editorial “RFK Jr. Conducts His Vaccine Purge” (June 11), HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices over a cost of conflicts of curiosity. He’s offered no proof of such entanglements, settling as a substitute for the declare that the “public should know that unbiased science guides the suggestions from our well being companies.”
But now we have proof of this from a associated case. Like ACIP, the Meals and Drug Administration makes use of exterior consultants on advisory committees. The FDA has tried to exclude members with ties to business, which has slowed the approval of medicine for uncommon situations as a result of the few consultants all have such ties. Happily, the results of committee conflicts of curiosity have been evaluated and proven to be nonexistent.
In 2006 the doctor Sidney Wolfe and several other colleagues printed an article within the Journal of the American Medical Affiliation that drew on 76 conferences of FDA advisory committees that concerned “sure” or “no” votes on particular person medication. They discovered that if voters with conflicts of curiosity had been excluded, not one of the 76 outcomes would have modified. The individuals with conflicts, furthermore, have been extra probably than these with out to vote for medication that might compete with “their” firm’s product.
In different phrases: Till confirmed in any other case, now we have no purpose to suppose ACIP had such an issue earlier than Mr. Kennedy’s purge.
David R. Henderson
Hoover Establishment
Pacific Grove, Calif.
Charles L. Hooper
Goal Insights, Inc.
Grass Valley, Calif.
Due to Charley for offering the backup hyperlink for the JAMA article. I obtained a request from the letters editor to offer the hyperlink and a few screenshots backing up our declare. I used to be about to depart with my spouse to have a good time Father’s Day.
