Drug Researcher Continues To Challenge Industry Claims

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A Canadian professor of pediatrics and medicine vows to continue speaking out on the risk of a drug used to treat thalassemia, a hereditary blood disorder. Dr. Nancy Olivieri lost her attempt to get her research on the harmful side effects of deferiprone looked at by the committee for proprietary and medicinal products (CPMP) that regulates drugs in Europe. "This ruling guarantees that only a drug company attempting to sell a drug will control the content of the scientific data submitted or not submitted to the European CPMP," she said. "It no longer matters whether drug companies tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because it's unchallengeable now." PR Watch First Quarter 2003 reported on Olivieri's fight for academic freedom when the drug company that funded her research blocked her from making her findings public.