Is bias about a pharmaceutical company’s products limited only to direct financial benefits (as U.S. Senator Charles Grassley has so adeptly shown)? Or can a conflict of interest exist where no money changes hands, but a person has other reasons to either promote or speak …
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I’ll offer one further point: if the people reporting this are biased, are the reporters themselves furthering the bias? Issues are not always black and white, but grey more so.
In the end though, isn’t the FDA process fairly much entrenched with biases and agendas that do not have consumer/patient protection as the first line agenda any more? Perhaps I am trying to say nicely that big pharma has corrupted so many processes to the health care industry that no one can say they are fully unbiased and objective.
Hell, I’m not! I hate what pharma has done to the field of psychiatry and my cynicism has pretty much jaded me to see any good out of the field these days, but yet I am not ready to let it go and trust anything medication driven for now. Maybe my mistake, but it will be few mistakes and more instinctual correct assumptions until proven otherwise. Let the fairly unbiased reader search out what Astra Zeneca has been doing promoting this drug Seroquel the last 4 years.
Unfortunately, I do not think you will enjoy what you learn. Again, my opinion.
Personally I don’t think bias can ever be removed from these things.
If the lady in question made her vote on the basis of her son’s situation, then her reasoning is flawed and her vote shouldn’t count. However, if she stated her personal information as an afterthought, after voting had taken place, then I don’t see why it shouldn’t stand.
Potential for bias is just so entwined with the nature of us as human beings, in my opinion, that it’s not feasible to root it out. What you hope is that you have enough people voting so that any biased votes will not be sufficient to sway the overall decision.