Bettina Ryll: Another publication that leaves you as a patient between a rock and a hard place

Bettina Ryll, Founder of MPN Europe, shared on LinkedIn:

“So another publication that leaves you as a patient between a rock and a hard place: here Pharma- payments to guideline writers.

Apart from being a delightful opportunity to pick apart the inconsistencies in the current debate- so surely, our guidelines are based on evidence. And surely one characteristic of evidence is that it’s well, evident. Unless of course it isn’t quite that evident in which case there is room for interpretation in which case that entire evidence-based guideline construct starts looking rather like a consensus exercise where suddenly personal opinions, experience and expertise count.

We also know that cancer patients treated in centres with clinical trials do better than those treated in cancers without clinical trials. Which happens where the folks sit that get Pharma-funded. We obviously like to believe that academic studies aren’t pharma- sponsored, aka not commercially biased (I shall not comment here whether academic bias is better or worse for patients). But if you go looking where the drugs come from- it’s not that investigators sell cakes to buy those expensive therapies for their trials. The only ones that then don’t get Pharma-funded are those without trials. And probably have a state system that pays for their CME trainings, too.

As this evidence-thing clearly isn’t quite that straightforward and interpretation therefore counts, the choice is between someone who may be influenced by having received pharma money but who has seen the drug and whose patients are likely to have better outcomes versus someone who hasn’t received pharma money but who hasn’t seen the drug and whose patients are likely to do worse.”

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Source: Bettina Ryll/LinkedIn