Health

Remember the PR hype and spin about how socially responsible and proactive 3M corporation was in pulling Scotchgard from the market last year? Well, check this out: "New analyses of 3M's own data, some decades old, reveals that the company knew far more, far earlier, about potential health problems from Scotchgard exposure. The (Scotchgard) story is likely to emerge as one of the apocryphal examples of 20th century experimentation with widespread chemical exposures without adequate testing."

Editors at the world's most prominent medical journals, alarmed that drug companies are exercising too much control over research results, have agreed to adopt a uniform policy that reserves the right to refuse to publish drug company-sponsored studies unless the researchers involved are guaranteed scientific independence. The journal editors decided to act after several recent cases involving charges that drug companies tried to withhold research results or present them in the most favorable way.

The Washingon Post reported NY-based PR firm Cohn & Wolfe's campaign for Glaxo SmithKline to promote its drug Paxil as a treatment for social anxiety disorder has raised concerns. The campaign calls into question whether pharmaceutical companies, traditionally in the business of finding new drugs for existing disorders, are increasingly in the business of seeking new disorders for existing drugs.

A Harris Interactive/BBK Healthcare Poll showed that more Americans are considering clinical research studies as treatment options and they want more education about the federal and international measures designed to protect them. According to a press release on "The Will & Why Survey," 83 percent of the 5000 respondents to the nationwide online survey said they would consider a clinical research study, but only 13 percent said they have had the opportunity to take part in one.