blondbraintrust

Two laws recently passed by Congress with strong industry backing have had
a chilling effect on government efforts to protect public health, according to a
UCSF study.
The laws make all raw data produced by federally funded research
available for public review, and require that any data disseminated by the
government adhere to definitions of quality set by the law – definitions that
industry interests helped develop. The new laws allow industry advocates to more
easily challenge or stall government scientific research and weaken proposed
regulations that affect them, the UCSF researchers assert.
Yet at the same time, research by industry faces no such high standard, and
as a result, pharmaceutical, tobacco and other industries can make claims that
are harder to challenge than the government's research-based standards, says
Lisa Bero, senior author of the study and professor of clinical pharmacy and
health policy at UCSF.
The UCSF study is published in a special issue of American Journal of
Public Health, online July 20, which draws on once-secret internal tobacco
industry documents to show this particular industry's role in establishing these
laws that now cripple regulation of many industries. The documents show motives,
strategies and tactics used by the tobacco industry working with other corporate
interests to challenge the scientific basis for public health policies.
This article is part of the entire issue devoted to "How Challenges from Industry
Undermine Scientific Evidence and Public Health Protections."

The two laws in question are the Data Access Act, passed in 1998, requiring for the first time that all raw data produced under federally funded research studies be
publicly available, and the Data Quality Act of 2001, requiring that
government-disseminated data adheres to standards established by the law.
"The Data Quality Act has implications for all corporate interests," Bero
says. "The tobacco industry documents give us insight into how different
companies worked together to produce legislation that makes it harder to
regulate industry. It basically allows corporate interests to challenge laws --
existing or proposed -- that do not meet the industry-developed data quality
standards for government-sponsored research.
"What is really ironic is that the data quality law applies only to government-sponsored research (such as NIH research), but not industry-funded research. So, industry-funded research does not have to adhere to the standards. This is particularly relevant with all the transgressions we've seen lately related to the quality or failure to publish industry science. The public health community cannot use the data quality law to challenge industry science."

# posted by blondbraintrust @ 12:20 PM