“We just can’t allow corporate PR and product defense to pass as science anymore,” said U.S. Right to Know Executive Director Gary Ruskin.
QUICK FACTS:
- A report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) found that “different sponsors might influence research so that the results are more favorable to their agents.”
- The report summarizes conclusions found during a three-day NASEM workshop on health research influence.
- The workshop included presentations from Dr. Lisa Bero, Chief Scientist of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities; Dr. David Michaels, an epidemiologist and professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health; Dr. Martin McKee, President of the British Medical Association and Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and Dr. Laura A. Schmidt, Professor Health Policy in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
- One discovery from the workshop was that “industry-sponsored studies were about 30 times more likely than non-industry sponsored studies to report statistically significant efficacy estimates.”
- For example, Dr. Bero pointed out that “Tobacco industry-sponsored reviews were almost 90 times more likely to conclude that secondhand smoke was not harmful,” which “raised some red flags.”
- An analysis of studies for the report found that sponsor agendas “rarely align with public health questions or prevention.”
- Gambling research, for example, “tends to emphasize psychological or genetic characteristics associated with gambling addiction and the genetic predisposition hypothesis.”
- In other words, many studies promote theories that point away from the health issue.
- Bero provided another example of bias through nutrition studies, where food-industry-funded research highlights micronutrients rather than whole diets: “You can see how this would have a commercial interest, because then those elements can be manipulated within the products, whereas the companies do not profit directly from whole dietary patterns.”
- These conflicts of interest are perpetuated as sponsor organizations set the standards for statistical information, favoring a particular agenda in cultivating health policies.
RESOLVING RESEARCH BIAS:
- Disclosing potential conflicts of interests are not enough, explained, Director of Cornell University’s Academic Leadership Institute, Professor of Management and Organizations at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Honorary Fellow at the University of Cambridge Sunita Sah.
- Sah emphasized the importance of creating a “deep professionalism” based on ethics.
- For instance, if a policy does not specifically regulate behavior, “those with deep professionalism will understand and internalize the principles and values of self-regulation and nurture their values repeatedly with active practice,” Sah described.
- Providing “open data…and a grade or rating on the degree of conflict, cultivating deep professionalism could lead to a self-calibrating effect that motivates people to do better and produce higher-quality research,” according to Sah.
- Others advocate for policy changes from the highest level, with Ruskin stating, “The message has to come from the top, from our President, from our Congress, from our governors, from our state legislatures.
- “We have to tell the truth to the American people that our current health evidence base may well not be that reliable, and that as a matter of federal and state policy, we are going to do better, we are going to build a health evidence base that we the people can trust and believe in, and that means one that is as free as possible from commercial influences,” Ruskin said.
BACKGROUND:
- The journal Vaccines warned that “over-vaccination” may weaken the alleged protection provided by the COVID-19 vaccine.
- The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine stimulates the body to create antibodies, such as IgG4.
- Too much IgG4 leads to “immune tolerance,” causing the body to reduce its response and potentially resulting in less protection against the virus.
- Repeated booster vaccines also lead to “T cell exhaustion,” inhibiting the immune system’s ability to fight against viruses.
- The study follows the worldwide COVID vaccine push.
