Making the Revolving Door Great Again: Recent FDA Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb Joins the Pfizer Board of Directors

It has been less than six weeks since our last post on the revolving door.





That post emphasized cases of the outgoing revolving door, that is, of
people leaving leadership positions in governmental bodies which
regulate health care or make health care policy, then soon obtaining
jobs
in the health care industry, particularly organizations which they
previously regulated or were

Politically Driven Public Health Disinformation - the Latest Examples: Dread Infections, Porn Causing White Male Impotence

It used to be all about the money. We had previously noted deceptive public relations practices, including orchestrated stealth health policy advocacy campaigns, to sell health policies favoring big health care corporations. Third party strategies used patient advocacy organizations and medical societies that had institutional conflicts of interest
due to their funding from companies selling

How to Counter Medical/ Health Care/ Public Health Disinformation

It used to be so simple. Yes, we had to cope with deception in marketing. Commercial sponsors of clinical research were known to manipulate the research, and even suppress research with results unfavorable to them. Key opinion leaders spun medical education and the media. But it was all releatively straightforward in some senses. It was all at least mostly based on medical knowledge and

That Old Time Revolving Door Keeps Spinning

Traditionally, the American examples we have seen of the revolving door involved people leaving leadership positions in governmental bodies which regulate health care or make health care policy then soon obtaining jobs in the health care industry, particularly organizations which they previously regulated or were affected by the policies they made, the outgoing revolving door. These examples

From "Forced Injections" to "Sorcery," - More Examples of Partisan Ideology and Religious Sectarianism Trumping Evidence in Health Policy and Public Health

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is about medical-decision making based on critical review
of the best applicable evidence from clinical research informed by
knowledge og biology and medicine, of the patient's biopsychosocial
circumstances, the patient's values, and of ethics and morality. Advocating EBM, and evidence-based health care, public health, and health policy was sometimes slow going,

The New (Ab)normal in Health Care Dysfunction

Introduction: The Issues Ignored by Discusisons of Health Care Reform

After the failed attempt to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Obamacare) in 2017, we summarized what we thought were the main issues that traditional discussions of health care reform in the US (and sometimes in other countries) did not address.Despite some protestations to the contrary (e.g., here), the US

Why Are We Complicit? A Narrative for Our Era

Why are seemingly good people complicit with bad things? In health care, we have seen seemingly good health care professionals and academics silent in the face of manipulation and suppression of clinical research; deception, attacks on free speech and the press, silencing of whistleblowers; conflicts of interest; ill-informed, incompetent, self-interested leadership; and outright corruption and

April, 2019, Update: How to Challenge Health Care Corruption Under a Corrupt Regime?

In these last few weeks, the US news has been dominated by the release of a redacted verion of the Mueller report which included extensive evidence of questionable behavior by President Trump, his campaign, and various Trump associates. This week, an editorial in Mother Jones suggested:


The Russia scandal was never, in the main, about whether the president would be prosecuted for a crime. It

The Rise of Ideologically or Theologically Based Medicine, Public Health, and Health Policy - Recent Examples

I have long been a proponent of evidence-based medicine (EBM), and evidence-based health care, public health, and health policy. EBM, for example, is about medical-decision making based on critical review of the best applicable evidence from clinical research informed by knowledge og biology and medicine, of the patient's biopsychosocial circumstances, the patient's values, and of ethics and

The HIV Epidemic, and Now the Measles Outbreak: The Russian Connection

I am old enough to remember having measles as a child, a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Some children had much unhappier results of measles than I did. So as a parent, I was happy to see that a reasonably effective measles vaccine had practically eliminated the disease from the US and most developed countries.

However, we currently are in the midst of a measles outbreak in the US. The

First the NIH Came for the Iranian Born Legal US Resident Scientists

Transparency, honesty, and collaboration are necessary to do science, including biomedical and clinical science right. In the US, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have always had a good reputation for transparency, honesty and collaboration, although they have had some revolving door and conflict of interest issues of late (look here, here, here here, and here).

However, an April 3

Why Did the Head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Outsource Communications Functions to Private Public Relations Firms? - Ethical and Legal Questions

There is now never a dull moment at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Its current director, Seema Verma, has developed a more efficient way to combine conflicts of interest with self-interest, bad management, and possibly worse.

Outsourcing CMS Communications to Private Public Relations Firms


In summary,

Despite Public Protestations of of Bipartisanship, Many CEOs of the Largest US Health Care Corporations Appear Partisan, and Mainly Republican

Leaders of big health care organizations clearly are interested in
influencing public policy and government regulation in ways that favor
their organizations, and often indirectly themselves. On the other hand, big health care organizations have traditionally been non-partisan.
While their leaders certainly may have political views, they used to
keep them very quiet.

In this sense, the