GAO urges more transparency of political appointments, compliance with agency ethics programs

Nicole Ogrysko
www.federalnewsnetwork.com
Originally posted March 15, 2019

The Government Accountability Office is urging Congress to require more transparency of agencies in collecting and publishing information on political appointees in the executive branch.

A new GAO study describing agencies’ struggles to track political appointees and their compliance with ethics programs reads, in a sense, like a greatest hits album of typical challenges pestering many facets of government.

Agency data tracking the appointments and departures of political officials, for example, is inconsistent and scattered across multiple systems and organizations. And challenges in recruitment, retention and training have led to persistent vacancies at departmental ethics offices.

“The public has an interest in knowing who is serving in the government and making policy decisions. The Office of Management and Budget stated that transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the government is doing,” GAO wrote. “Until the names of political appointees and their position, position type, agency or department name, start and end dates are publicly available at least quarterly, it will be difficult for the public to access comprehensive and reliable information.”

The info is here.

The college admissions scandal is a morality play

Elaine Ayala
San Antonio Express-News
Originally posted March 16, 2019

The college admission cheating scandal that raced through social media and dominated news cycles this week wasn’t exactly shocking: Wealthy parents rigged the system for their underachieving children.

It’s an ancient morality play set at elite universities with an unseemly cast of characters: spoiled teens and shameless parents; corrupt test proctors and paid test takers; as well as college sports officials willing to be bribed and a ring leader who ultimately turned on all of them.

William “Rick” Singer, who went to college in San Antonio, wore a wire to cooperate with FBI investigators.

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Yet even though they were arrested, the 50 people involved managed to secure the best possible outcome under the circumstances. Unlike many caught shoplifting or possessing small amounts of marijuana and who lack the lawyers and resources to help them navigate the legal system, the accused parents and coaches quickly posted bond and were promptly released without spending much time in custody.

The info is here.

Is the Trump Administration Skirting Its Own Ethics Rules?

The hiring of three former lobbyists to work in the White House raises questions about the president’s executive order on ethics.

Justin Elliott
The Pacific Standard
Originally published on March 7, 2017

The Trump administration appears to be either ignoring or exempting top staffers from its own watered-down ethics rules.

As we have detailed, President Donald Trump in January issued an order weakening Obama-era ethics policies, allowing lobbyists to work at agencies they had sought to influence. The Trump order did limit what lobbyists could do once they entered government, banning them from directly handling issues on which they had lobbied.

But the administration may not be even following that.

We’ve found three hires announced this week who, in fact, are working on the same issues on which they were registered lobbyists while in the private sector.

The article is here.

Chronic Pain Fuels Boom in Opioids

By John Fauber

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today

Originally published on February 19, 2012

Prescriptions for narcotic painkillers soared so much over the last decade that by 2010 enough were being dispensed to medicate every adult in the U.S. around-the-clock for a month.

Fueling that surge was a network of pain organizations, doctors, and researchers that pushed for expanded use of the drugs while taking in millions of dollars from the very companies that made them, a Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigation found.

Last year, the Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today found that a University of Wisconsin-Madison-based organization had been a national force in helping liberalize the way opioids are prescribed and viewed. During a decade-long campaign that promoted expanded use of opioids -- an agenda that critics say was not supported by rigorous science -- the UW Pain & Policy Studies Group received $2.5 million from makers of opioid analgesics.

After that article was published last April, the UW Pain group said it had decided to stop taking money from the drug industry.

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The Pendulum Swings Back

Several of the pain industry's core beliefs about chronic pain and opioids are not supported by good science and contributed to the growing use of the drugs, a Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today review of records and interviews found.

Among the misconceptions:

• The risk of addiction is low in patients who obtain their narcotic painkillers legitimately.
• There is no maximum dose of the drugs that can't be safely prescribed.
• People who seek more frequent prescriptions or higher doses of the drugs aren't addicts, they are "pseudoaddicts" who just need more pain relief and more opioids.

Underlying those fallacies, critics say, is an even larger one: That the use of narcotic painkillers to treat non-cancer pain lasting many months or years is supported by rigorous science.

Even doctors who have financial relationships with companies that make narcotic painkillers concede that the practice of pain medicine got ahead of the science.

Lynn Webster, MD, a Utah pain specialist who has worked as a consultant and adviser to most of the companies in the opioid analgesic market, said the pain community got some of it wrong.

"We overshot our mark, all well-intended, I believe," Webster, an officer of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, said in an interview. "We certainly have a lot of reverse education that needs to occur."

Some chronic pain sufferers do benefit from the drugs, Webster said.

"The problem is pain is complex," he said. "There is a whole family of opioids and we have not figured out how to best identify the individuals who can benefit long term.

"I don't think industry was trying to harm anyone. I think industry was trying to fill a need that we as physicians saw."

Others say that Webster is too forgiving in his analysis: they claim that the pharmaceutical industry chose profits over patient safety.

The entire story is here.

Is journalism the drug industry’s new dance partner?

Ray Moynihan

By Ray Moynihan, author, journalist, and conjoint lecturer, University of Newcastle, Australia

Exploring the new frontier in influence peddling

Just as many doctors contemplate an end to their dance with drug company marketers, a fresh new crew is stepping lively onto the floor: journalists and media organisations looking for easy ways to fund their reporting, travel, and education.

The BMJ reported last week that the Murdoch empire’s flagship newspaper in Australia has accepted an undisclosed amount of sponsorship money from the drug industry for a series of articles on health policy—and that the idea arose from a meeting between advertising agents.

Defending the deal, the Australian’s editor said that independence and integrity were maintained; but as others pointed out, this new form of financial closeness between journalists and the companies they scrutinise raises real concerns.

A few years ago the industry body Medicines Australia started sponsoring annual journalism awards, with the prize for the health journalist of the year award including $A1000 cash (£660; €760; $US1060) and an international study tour. Presumably all recipients will swear that the award and the world trip had no undesirable effects on their future coverage, and they may well be right.

What we're witnessing is a slow and subtle attempt to buy influence and goodwill within the media, which in general have become increasingly rigorous in their coverage of the unhealthy aspects of pharmaceutical marketing.

The article can be found here.

Cite this as: BMJ 2011; 343:d6978