Needs Assessment
The corporatization of medicine has created a climate conducive to conflicts of interest and pseudo-science, core issues leading to the collapse of global public health.
There is no independent scientific body that critically examines the Biotechnology/Pharmaceutical/Medical/Nuclear/Chemical Industrial Complex and its ubiquitous lobbying and PR flackery in the halls of Congress, statehouses, federal agencies, research universities, and governmental units in other nations.
In a recent book review(J Pub Health Policy 2003;24:479-483) Sheldon Krimsky observed that Big Pharma "is rapidly becoming a vertically integrated industry. It pays for research, owns the data, often dictates to researchers what gets published, pays for ghost-written articles, markets directly to consumers, purchases journal supplements, keeps academic scientists on healthy consultant lines, supports the education and sometimes the vacations of physicians, and influences public policy through donations to election campaigns and sophiscated lobbying," not to mention buying whole departments.
The revelation by Los Angeles Times reporter David Willman(7 Dec 2003) concerning consulting payments to ranking NIH officials from pharmaceutical companies over a period of several years underscores the necessity for greater public scrutiny.
The cancer establishment continues to preach its Victimology Theology (It's your fault you got cancer.) that emphasizes diet (35%) and tobacco(30%) as the primary risk factors and ignores the primary causes, i.e., low-dose ionizing radiation and the co-action of chemicals, issues that receive scant attention in medical school and public health curricular armamentaria.
The nuclear lobby is winning the battle to construct a new generation of nuclear power plants and develop another class of nuclear weapons, visiting additional dangers upon the citizenry, issues deserving of greater public scrutiny and governmental oversight.
Title 42, Sec.285a of the U.S. Code mandates the NCI's National Cancer Program to carry out "an expanded and intensified research program for the prevention of cancer caused by occupational and environmental exposure to carcinogens," largely ignored. The causal factors include: low-dose ionizing radiation from medical X rays, nuclear power plant emissions, recurrent accidental releases; mutagenic food contaminants and hormone disrupters; the degradation of indoor air quality; unwillingness of the NIH to take the leadership in identifying the half century-long failure to establish health-based target exposure limits for the prevention and elimination of adverse outcomes from toxins before massive proliferation throughout the environment as persistent organic pollutants(POPS); the gross failure of the governmental regulatory agencies to promote and enforce occupational exposure limits that do exist; systemic failures to recognize the role of carcinogenic initiators, promoters, and immune suppressants that interfere with cytotoxic T-cell defense; surveillance mechanisms and the additive or synergistic interaction of these persistent organic toxins with vital chemical processes central to cellular molecular biochemistry; the preservation of the integrity of cellular and mitochondrial DNA.
In the backdraft of the Enron debacle, independent stock market analysts have testified that our megamerged corporations have become fertile ground for germination of systemic conflicts of interest, now reflected by the growing number of indentured academics who pass through the revolving door into the corporate sanctum sanctorum, an ethical minefield inimical to the public health and safety.
Representatives of diverse stakeholders, with no ties(equity/advisory) to for-profit corporations, need to establish a coalition to inform policy makers and the public concerning these multiple threats to sound science and the public health and safety.
