This article does not bear at all on the tea article you posted
previously, there is no mention of tea at all. As a meat industry
marketing shill do you see any similar approaches used in this industry
as in your own?
more details:
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/ClinicalTrials/tb/4827
Beverage-Industry Funded Research Yields Sweet Results
By Neil Osterweil, Senior Associate Editor, MedPage Today
January 09, 2007
Additional Clinical Trials Coverage
BOSTON, Jan. 9 -- When soft-drink companies fund nutritional research,
the result is quite likely to be a favorable outcome, according to our
researchers here.
Nutritional studies involving soft drinks, juice, or milk were nearly
eight times more likely to be favorable to the product studied when
the beverages' manufacturer picked up the tab, reported David S.
Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., of Children's Hospital, and colleagues, in the
December 2006 issue of PLoS Medicine.
The authors reviewed more than 200 nutritional studies of beverages,
and found that when industry funded interventional trials, none of the
studies had unfavorable results. In contrast, 37% of interventional
studies that were not supported by a company or trade group gave
thumbs down to the product in question.
"Industry funding of nutrition-related scientific articles may bias
conclusions in favor of sponsors' products, with potentially
significant implications for public health," the investigators wrote.
They're not the first researchers to take note of an apparent bias in
industry-supported medical or scientific research.
For example Paul M. Ridker, M.D., and Jose Torres of Harvard Medical
School reported in the May 17 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association that when a drug company or device-maker is
funding a clinical trial for a new cardiovascular treatment, the
reported outcome is likely to reveal good news for the new treatment.
Likewise, when funding comes from non-profit sources, the outcomes are
less likely to favor the new treatments and when for-profit and not-
for-profit funders split the tab, the results seem more even-handed.
Moreover, when a trial uses a surrogate endpoint rather than a
clinical endpoint, the results are likely to favor the new treatments
regardless of who is paying for the research.
In the current study, Dr. Ludwig and colleagues searched the medical
literature worldwide to identify interventional studies, observational
studies, and scientific reviews of soft drinks, juice, and milk,
looking especially for those articles where funding sources were
declared.
They used exact tests and regression analyses controlled for
covariates to explore the relationship between outcomes and money
source.
They identified 206 articles, 111 of which disclosed financial
sponsorship. Of the studies that listed a funding source, 22% were
industry backed, 32% had mixed funding, and 47% had no industry
support.
The investigators found that the "funding source was significantly
related to conclusions when considering all article types (P=0.037).
For interventional studies, the proportion with unfavorable
conclusions was 0% for all industry funding versus 37% for no industry
funding (P=0.009). The odds ratio of a favorable versus unfavorable
conclusion was 7.61 (95% confidence interval 1.27 to 45.73), comparing
articles with all industry funding to no industry funding."
Biased conclusions in nutrition studies may have even more of an
adverse public health impact than slanted drug studies, the
investigators warned.
"We don't all take drugs, but we eat every day," Dr. Ludwig said. "If
the science base is compromised by conflict of interest, that's a top-
order threat to public health."
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