Ironic Quote of the Day

In an article in yesterday's New York Times, Republican senator Chuck Grassley wants to prohibit medical ghostwriting and force changes in corporate pharmaceutical companies’ involvement with research papers.

A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation’s top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies — articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products.

Experts in medical ethics condemn this practice as a breach of the public trust. Yet many universities have been slow to recognize the extent of the problem, to adopt new ethical rules or to hold faculty members to account

Wait, here's the irony - quoting the NYT story by Natasha Singer - who's she fooling? (my emphasis in bold)

With a letter last week, a senator who helps oversee public funding for medical research signaled that he was running out of patience with the practice of ghostwriting. Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has led a long-running investigation of conflicts of interest in medicine, is starting to put pressure on the National Institutes of Health to crack down on the practice.

I just wonder if he'll call for an investigation into himself. The senator, a staunch opponent of health care reform, in his career has received his most campaign donations from the insurance industy, health care professionals, hospitals/nursing homes, health services/HMO's - and Big Pharma. I'm running out of patience with sen. Grassley. He's a crooked pol.