Public supports data access
More than four in five Americans believe if the federal government pays for health-related research the results should be freely availalbe both to other medical researchers and to the general public according to a Harris Poll announced May 31.
Yet a week earlier an editorial in Kidney International criticized the Salt Institute for employing the Data Quality Act with its requirement that data disseminated by federal agencies had to be available for independent review and verification. In this case, the data in question were from a federally-funded study and used by the federal government to make policy and issue public health guidelines.
Perhaps we should simply conclude that HHS is thumbing its nose at the public in sitting on these data. But perhaps another well-known phenomenon is taking place. When pollsters ask the public their opinion about Congress, not only this year, but generally over the past generation, Congress scores poorly (lower than George W., and that's not good), but when asked whether they think their own Congressman is doing a good job, most say "yes." It's a question of the trees and the forest.
Perhaps the public hasn't focused on the fact that when a bureaucrat locks up federally-funded research, the question should be on access, not on whether the individual being polled agrees with the opinion of the bureaucrat on what the undisclosed data really mean.
When six of eight subgroups of the DASH-Sodium study show no statistically significant relationship of salt and blood pressure -- and don't address at all the paramount question of whether a health benefit is realized -- then we all are losers when HHS refuses to abide by the Data Quality Act and allow independent verification of its interpretation that "every American" benefits by cutting back salt.
The public "gets it" on the macro level. Now we need to get down to cases.
