| Senator Grassley has discovered that doctors are not complying with disclosure laws, such as disclosure to the university or to NIH about their outside income. Universities or state governments certainly should crack down on the violations and require simple disclosure. The universities may not do anything with the information, but at least there would be a record of receipt of industry money.
There are strong tools available. For example, if a scientist doesn’t provide full information, that scientist could be prohibited from receiving a grant for three years from a government agency. With scientific journals, Environmental Health Perspectives, which is published by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, has a policy whereby if an author fails to disclose a conflict of interest and this is discovered later, the scientist isn’t allowed to publish in that journal for three years. Over the last ten years, there has been a remarkable enlightenment regarding conflicts of interest. Ten years ago, it was kind of an iffy subject that wasn’t discussed very much. Then, medical journals began setting some restrictions. While there has been some backsliding, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has adopted a policy on what information must be disclosed.
Soda and Other Junk Foods
Speaking of conflicts of interest, Coca-Cola recently signed what amounts to a sponsorship agreement with the American Academy of Family Physicians, similar to one Coke had several years ago with the American Academy of Pediatric Dentists. What are your thoughts about such arrangements?
It’s clever marketing by Coca-Cola. They are seeking what I call “innocence by association.” Here we have the world’s biggest purveyor of liquid candy needing to bolster its reputation. So what better way is there than by cozying up to a medical association? Coca-Cola officials can then say how much their company is doing for the public’s health by giving money to the American Academy of Family Physicians or Pediatric Dentists. So it’s smart marketing on their part.
But it’s suicidal for medical organizations that purport to advocate for the public health to accept money from a company that promotes disease. I hope that the American Academy of Family Physicians will just return the money. But meanwhile, they’ve got a real black eye.
Do you endorse taxes on soda and is soda worse than other junk food?
There’s a lot of junk out there but soda pop rises to the top for two reasons. One is that we consume such huge volumes of it compared to just about any other food. Second, it’s particularly conducive to obesity because its calories are in a liquid form, which the body does not compensate for the way it compensates for calories from solid foods. Soda pop is the only food or beverage that has been shown by multiple scientific studies to promote weight gain and obesity.
So people don’t feel full after drinking soda the way they do from other sweets and fats.
That’s right. They just keep on having more. So it’s an appropriate food, or beverage, to be taxed. It’s not the only one that could be taxed. Many states tax snack foods as well as soft drinks. But soft drinks are a more easily defined category than snack foods. It’s for that combination of reasons that legislators have looked to taxing soft drinks. A couple of dozen states have taxes for soft drinks and a smaller number for snack foods. A tax can bring in a lot of money. New York State, for instance, already has a sales tax on soft drinks—but an additional tax would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Soda-tax revenues could be used for health purposes, to fund Medicaid, to fund bike paths, to have media campaigns to encourage healthier eating habits. Besides raising money, the higher prices that would result from a tax would modestly reduce soda consumption. It’s not going to end soda sales but it would have a dampening effect.
If you look at the diet consumed by most Americans, what do you see as the major problems? |
