CV and mad panic behaviour

[ElwoodBlues1]

Come on EB! 

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is an agency of the European Union (EU) responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines in the EU.  It is probably world's best practice in ensuring independence with a management board of 36 who are completely independent of government and the private sector. 

EMA has seven scientific committees that are drawn from the relevant government agencies of each member country and they rely heavily on networks of scientific experts.  They have relatively few staff and don't employ ex-"big pharma" employees.

The European Ombudsman found that the complaint about EMA's safety review of HPV vaccines was without foundation and its "examination of scientific evidence was complete and it was independent."  Of course, the HPV vaccines have been in widespread use for some time now and are safe and effective.

Pharmacy companies contribute funding for the operation of EMA, as they should.  Why should taxpayers foot the bill for research into the quality, safety and efficacy of human and veterinary medicines?

Finally, the EU legislation that set up the EMA requires it to provide all EU citizens with access to all documents with the exception of personal, sensitive and commercially confidential information - almost exactly the same as our Therapeutic Goods Administration restrictions on releasing information.

DJ, They do employ Big Pharma employees as you can see in that article, they list them and as you say its Big Pharma money helping fund the EMA. Also the meat of the story of those articles is how the actual testing of medicines is done by the same companies who develop them and how they wont release any of the test data for independent scrutiny under the guise of commercial confidentiality.It doesnt get more sensitive than having a lot of peoples lives on the line and a vaccine of this nature in these circumstances doesnt come under the commercial confidential banner IMHO.
If they have nothing to fear they should allow independent testing and make all their research data available for the safety of all in this case as its a world wide emergency, it shouldnt be about the commercial aspect at all and money, but with Big Pharma it always is The EMA and the WHO have plenty in common.....