The ACP testified on the "breast cancer screening controversy". These paragraphs make the point beautifully:
Addressing lessons learned from the controversy over the recent breast screening guidelines, Dr. Sweet noted that the public is ill-served when assessments of clinical effectiveness are politicized. For clinicians and patients alike to have confidence in the evidence, physicians need to know that it has been developed through a process that is independent of political pressure.
“ACP is concerned that such politicization, if left unchallenged, could lead to efforts to eliminate the Task Force, cut its funding, or result in politically-driven changes so that future evaluations are influenced by political or stakeholder interests—instead of science,” Dr. Sweet emphasized. “We would be concerned that this would also lead to political interference over other federally-funded entities involved in evidence-based research.”
Amen
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Dr. Centor,
The trouble is, this cat is well out of the bag.
I saw where the commission members said that they did not consider politics at all in making their recommendations.
But you know for sure that they will, the next time.
It's not a good thing for science, and it's yet another reason why it is so much better if we can keep politicians away from it.
Cheers,
Evan
Evan Falchuk above states that the cat is already out of the bag. It's more like a tiger running wild through the streets. Politics vanquished evidenced-based medicine. How hard will comparative effectiveness research (CER) and health care reform be? Obviously, much harder than we thought. When Sec'y Sebelius pushed back against her own government's USPSTF, we learned that CER really stands for Comparative Effectiveness Retreat. http://www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com
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