(CSPI: Washington) -- In a report released in mid-November, the Food and Drug Administration claimed a new report prepared by the Eastern Research Group showed it would be difficult to create advisory committees free from conflicts of interest and that advisers granted conflict-of-interest waivers have greater expertise than those without conflicts of interest. An independent analysis of the data in the study shows just the opposite, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which, with other prominent science and consumer groups, recently urged the FDA to adopt the conflict-of-interest guidelines the agency published last March. Those guidelines would ban anyone with greater than $50,000 a year in financial ties to industry from advisory committees and deny a vote to anyone with lesser conflicts.

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