https://americanfaith.com/pharma-reps-pushed-out-of-fda-advisory-committees/
" The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it is removing representatives of pharmaceutical companies from its advisory committees. The development serves Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promise to “carry out the Department’s work with ‘radical transparency’ and mitigate perceived industry influence and conflicts of interests,” the FDA said in a news release.
“While the FDA should be partnering with industry to ensure a user-friendly review process, the scientific evaluation of new products should be independent,” said FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary. “Industry employees are welcome to attend FDA advisory committee meetings, along with the rest of the American public, but having industry employees serve as official members of FDA advisory committee members represents a cozy relationship that is concerning to many Americans. In fact, the FDA has a history of being influenced unduly by corporate interests.”
“Public trust in the healthcare-industrial complex is at an all-time low. We need to restore impeccable integrity to the process and avoid potential conflicts of interest,” Makary added. " End Quote
Common Sense 101.
Washington banned common sense years ago.
Congress is a prime example
I actually think it's a bad idea. I think they should be one seat on these committees. The reason is that the committees are supposed to reflect the interests of various stakeholders within the system. The patient, the doctors, the administrators, the scientists, the insurers who pay the bills, the distributors who handle the products' logistics, etc. The guy who makes the drug should get a seat at the table.
Failure to give the guy who actually holds the most leverage because he owns all the IP, and provides the physical products on which we all depend some skin in the game is a very dangerous game.
The last thing we want is a committee deciding how to apportion resources, what to recommend, or not, etc and no one asking the guy who makes the stuff. That's incredibly stupid, IMO. It's like discussing regulation of the airline industry without consulting Boeing or Airbus who make the planes.
This is not common sense. This is pure ideology, and it's a terrible idea.
What RFK Jr should be doing is limiting them to 1 or 2 seats on the committees (depending on the size) and ensuring all the other stakeholders in the process get seats too. It's not uncommon for all of these seats to be filled with academic doctors from big name teaching hospitals, all with active research or consulting agreements with the pharma companies to make up the lion's share of those committees. Their interests are overrepresented, and because they're all academics, all funded by the NIH and pharma, all trained in the same circles, there's a massive groupthink that develops. That's the thing that needs to stop.
This is easy to fix. Most medical licensing boards do things like this to ensure local rules and regs reflect the interests of everyone involved. That's the solution, not kicking out all of the pharma people entirely. Just limit their seats.