Andrew Schlafly, Esq., General Counsel of AAPS, gives an update on the status of legislation to reform the Texas Medical Board. The presentation is from the AAPS evening program, Politics and Your Practice, held June 5, 2009 in Irving, TX
Patient representation on the revised IDSA guideline panel: Is it real or token? The IDSA…
I don’t know about you, but I have watched wide-eyed and breathless as the Centers…
Responding to patient concerns, the President of ILADS, Dr. Robert Bransfield today delivered a letter to the IDSA calling upon the organization to remove barriers to guidelines change. The letter follows patient complaints to ILADS about the IDSA voting process, which were uncovered by the Connecticut Attorney General in the oversight of the IDSA Lyme guidelines review process. According to the Attorney General, the voting process used by the IDSA was in violation of the terms of the antitrust Settlement Agreement. The Attorney General has called upon the IDSA to redo the vote using the proper voting procedures. Text of the ILADS letter follows the jump.
50% of the 272 speakers at the October 2009 IDSA annual meeting who disclosed conflicts, had ties to one or more of the five leading vaccine companies: Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Wyeth, and Novartis. Vaccine related financial ties with key members of the IDSA Lyme panel prompted the Connecticut Attorney General antitrust investigation into the development of the IDSA Lyme guidelines. Patients remain concerned about these interests because the IDSA guidelines placed commercial interests of vaccine manufacturers above patient care.
On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed into law a stimulus program that includes $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research. The Partnership to Improve Patient Care, a coalition of patient groups, physicians and pharmaceuticals, warned that the research might be inappropriately used to “limit treatment options for patients.” A health care e-list that I’m on has become an active war zone on this issue. (Full disclosure—I am a combatant.)
Last Thursday, the historic review of the IDSA 2006 Lyme guidelines was held in Washington, D.C. Eighteen people presented arguments for and against the guidelines. We don’t know how the IDSA panel will act in the face of this deluge of previously suppressed information, but we do know that we have grown enormously as a community and that the skill-sets we developed on this project will continue to have a positive effect in the future.
I want to share with you a little of the background of the action and acknowledge people who have joined in this massive undertaking over this period. Many others have contributed, and I apologize if I have overlooked anyone’s contribution to this effort.
