WP,pg1: Studies on Painkillers in Jeopardy (pall cast over research)

Studies on Painkillers In Jeopardy
Researchers Assess Risk-Benefit Ratio

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 26, 2004; Page A01


The spate of bad news about painkillers has dealt a major setback to what had been a highly promising effort to use the drugs to prevent a host of leading killers, including many types of cancer, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

Since concerns emerged that drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex might cause heart attacks and strokes, researchers testing the drugs in dozens of studies have been frantically scouring whatever data they have gathered so far for signs of danger, urgently debating whether the trials should continue, and quickly informing participants of possible risks.

Several large studies have shut down fully or partially, including trials for preventing colon cancer, prostate cancer, Alzheimer's and, just last week, two large international studies evaluating Celebrex to cut the risk of getting breast cancer or suffering a recurrence. Other studies have been temporarily suspended until all participants could be warned of the possible danger.

Overall, the startling new concerns about the drugs' safety have cast a pall over what had been one of the most exciting fields of biomedical research, which was trying to harness important new insights into the underlying cause of a wide spectrum of illnesses....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25963-2004Dec25.html

http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-04/features/forbidden-science/

Yorghos Apostolopoulos was at his office at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta last October when his red voice-mail light started glowing. When he picked up the phone, he heard a somber voice. “We need to speak,” said the caller, a program officer at the National Institutes of Health, which funds Apostolopoulos’s research on infectious disease. Her voice was drained of its usual casualness. “Don’t have any of your assistants call,” she said. “I want to speak with you personally.”



Apostolopoulos is a confident Athenian with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair and an intensity that belies his compact frame. With the NIH’s help, he has been pursuing a cutting-edge question about human behavior: How do networks of people—in particular, long-haul truck drivers—work together to accelerate the spread of an epidemic, even when some of them don’t know one another? Epidemiologists have long connected the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa with truckers who get infected on the road and bring the virus home to their wives and girlfriends. But does the same hold true in the United States?



Working with a team of ethnographers, who study different cultures, Apostolopoulos and his partner Sevil Sönmez burrowed into the hidden world of truck stops, first in Arizona, then in Georgia. They began mapping the overlapping groups of people who come into contact with drivers: prostitutes (sometimes called lot lizards), drug suppliers, cargo unloaders, and male “truck chasers,” who fetishize drivers. The researchers conducted extensive interviews to understand how truckers’ occupational stresses led to depression, drug abuse, and unprotected sex. And they have collected blood, urine, and vaginal swabs from drivers and members of their social network to map how infection travels from state to state.

Apostolopoulos considered his work essential, but not everyone agreed. That’s why the NIH officer was calling: Apostolopoulos’s name had topped an alphabetical listing of more than 150 scientists whose research was being challenged by conservative political activists. An 11-page list of NIH-funded grants was circulating around Capitol Hill and had been sent by a congressional staffer to NIH’s Maryland campus. Now the Emory research was being targeted by a group called the Traditional Values Coalition. “Wait until you see how angry the American people get when they discover . . . NIH been using federal tax dollars to study ‘lot lizards,’” coalition director Andrea Lafferty declared in an open letter. “What plausible defense can be constructed for ‘investigating’ the sexual practices of prostitutes who service truckers?” more at link.......

Stopping condom distribution in schools, preaching abstinence instead of practical sex education, and now harassing scientists who are trying to halt the next pandemic.

:grr: <-and that doesn't even begin to express my IRE!

until you see how angry the American people get when they discover . . . NIH been using federal tax dollars to study ‘lot lizards,’” coalition director Andrea Lafferty declared in an open letter. “What plausible defense can be constructed for ‘investigating’ the sexual practices of prostitutes who service truckers?”

They're kidding right?

other businesses serving them. Who knows how many local Repug and Dem politicians get big money from these places. I don't want to tarnish the South...imagine there are "truck stops" with the same activities all over the US but they don't seem to advertise on Bill Boards as heavily as what one sees from NC down through FLA. I certainly never saw ads for "Sex Shops on the side of the Road advertising "Dolls and Toys" when I lived in the Northeast...

whoda thunk??

learn something new every day...

why the hell they just can't say male prostitutes is beyond me.

It seems to me that any lifestyle that puts a man away from domestic life for the majority of his time is bound to be a draw for closet cases (the military, prison, maritime occupations,etc).

This is a new one. This kills me I've never heard this mentioned in the study of the spread of AIDS. The faggots have to be out drag queens in San Francisco, they can't be macho tractor trailer drivers. Ten-four good buddy, indeed.

A lot of confusion on the part of some of those interviewed.
There are several different issues:

1) the ethical issue of conducting trials on people who are not ill prospectively with drugs known to carry a risk. Protocols are approved and monitored by interdisciplinary institutional boards for just this reason.

2) with those already ill, the risks have already been given and the releases of liability already signed, so it isn't a liability concern but a scientific concern as the perception of greater risk than initially perceived degrades the study and impairs its scientific validity as people either drop out or misrepresent their participation.

3) the propaganda overlay appealing to the anti-regulatory bias and anti-product liability bias which is prominent in the medical and pharmaceutical sector. Doctors make a lot of money off clinical trials. Pharmaceutical companies stand to make a lot of money from "successful" clinical trials.

4) the overwhelming influence of the pharmaceutical industry which can distort both the regulatory process and the scientific analysis of clinical testing.

Gee, why is it that the FDA is always months behind the European regulatory agencies concerning epidemiological signals? Because their scientists aren't as good as ours? Because they're socialists? Because they're Cassandras? Or is it because the American pharmaceutical corporations are short sighted and always shooting themselves in the foot?