1. effectmeasure
  2. Absence of evidence at WHO

Absence of evidence at WHO

By revere on May 9, 2007.

An article by Norwegian researchers in the UK medical journal, The Lancet, takes WHO to task for making issuing guidelines without adequate reference to existing evidence.

The study was conducted by Dr. Andrew Oxman and Dr. Atle Fretheim, of the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services, and Dr. John Lavis at McMaster University in Hamilton. They interviewed senior WHO officials and analyzed various guidelines to determine how they were produced. What they found was a distinctly non-transparent process.

"It's difficult to judge how much confidence you can have in WHO guidelines if you're not told how they were developed," Oxman said. "In that case, you're left with blind trust." (AP)

It's not a small matter. There are a couple of hundred recommendations and guidelines issued every year by WHO. Many of these recommendations deal with areas where the data are scanty, at best, so it isn't just WHO incompetence. Moreover some WHO agencies do an excellent job of evaluating the evidence. One of the best at it is the International Agency for Research on Cancer, whose agent specific monographs on carcinogens have been influential documents for decades.

In one sense this is good news. It means people are looking hard at WHO. It also means that WHO will have to do better. Which it needs to do.

And which it can do.

Tags
WHO

More like this

"Obama's fixin' death panels for your mama," the misogyny gambit, and other idiotic responses to the updated USPSTF mammography recommendations
I knew when I first heard about them that the new United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on breast cancer screening would be controversial. I tried to discuss these guidelines and the issues involved in a calm and rational way, relatively devoid of Insolence,…
This Week's Spectrum of Tactics for Interfering with Government Science
For those whoâve been following the investigations into how the Bush Administration interfered with government climate science, the news about political interference into Interior Department science had a familiar ring. Chris Mooney sums it up well: âSubstitute for Philip Cooney an Interior…
Be prepared
Be prepared, and be careful not to do Your good deeds when there's no one watching you If you're looking for adventure of a new and different kind And you come across a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared, Be prepared (Tom Lehrer, Be Prepared…
A big pain for biomedicine: anesthesiologist commits massive research fraud.
The headlines bring news of another scientist (this time a physician-scientist) caught committing fraud, rather than science. This story is of interest in part because of the scale of the deception -- not a paper or two, but perhaps dozens -- and in part because the scientist's area of research,…

Well, as I said on the FW the other day, you need to look at who these experts are, who give WHO the advice and recommendations.

http://www.newfluwiki2.com/showComment.do?commentId=43929

Out of curiosity, or cos I was bored, I spent some time last week looking up how they set up their expert advisory panel and who are they are.

I didn't quite find what I wanted, but I found this http://www.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB117/B117_28Add1-en.pdf, which, when I opened it up and counted, told me that the WHO has a total of 91 experts on parasites, and 2 on respiratory infections, 19 on oral health but 8 for all STD and HIV, a total of 116 for pharmaceutical preparations, drug evaluation, and drug policies and management, which I thought were all of the same thing.

But what do I know. I'm not a WHO expert.