ja hoitosuositukset, IDSA:n suositukset. Eli juuri ne; joita vastaan on
taisteltu, ihan kansainvälisestikin. Ihan oikeudessakin todettiin, että
edellisten suositusten laatijoista useilla henkilöillä oli taloudellisia
intressejä ihan liiankin kanssa. Juuri tätä asiaa Hesarinkin artikkeli
käsitteli.
Nyt vaan kävi niin, että tilanne ei huomattavasti parantunut. Paneelin
valitsijamies kun päätti diskata siitä kaikki lääkärit, jotka oikeasti
hoitavat borrelioosipotilaita.
Aiheesta tarkemmin:
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http://www.lymedise ase.org/news/ lyme_blog_ 2/20.html
Conflicting views on conflicts?throwing the baby out with the bathwater
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Conflicts of interest are not good for medicine. Why? Because when a physician
has a conflict a secondary considerations (such as a lab referrals, vaccine
research grants, or revenues from proprietary diagnostic tests) may compete and
trump concerns about the best care for the patient. The last Lyme disease
guidelines by the IDSA suffered from an abundance of conflicts of interest and
no oversight. In fact, the Attorney General found extensive conflicts of
interests among the IDSA panel that developed those guidelines. The IDSA?s new
guidelines panel, which was legally mandated by a settlement with the
Connecticut Attorney General, was supposed to eliminate these types of conflicts
of interests and an ethicist, Dr. Howard Brody, director of the Institute for
Medical Humanities at the University of Texas (habrody@utmb. edu) was chosen to
oversee these conflicts.
So what?s the problem? Well, expert panels are first and foremost supposed to be
experts. And, while you may not want pharmaceutical interests driving the cart,
you definitely want physicians who treat the disease on the panel. Brody
rejected any applicant who made more than $10,000 a year from treating Lyme
disease. This excluded all physicians who saw more than one patient per week who
had Lyme disease. Simply put, there are no experts on this panel that treat Lyme
disease or who could form meaningful ?expert opinions?. To put this in
perspective, the last IDSA guidelines panel based the majority of its
recommendations on ?expert opinion?. If there are no experts on treating Lyme
disease on the panel, then what type of expert opinion can recommendations such
as these be based on? In short, Brody threw out the baby with the bathwater. Who
would expect a cardiology panel to be populated with physicians who are not
cardiologists? The notion is
absurd. In law, this is known as reduction ad absurdum.
Sheila M. Statlender, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
53 Langley Road - Suite 330C
Newton Centre, MA 02459
617-965-2329