Big Pharma Exec to Head “Independent” Institute Of Medicine

Victor Dzau, currently the chancellor for health affairs at Duke University, will be the new president of the Institute of Medicine, beginning July 1, 2014. Dzau’s work at Duke University has a long history of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which accepts a great deal of money from Big Pharma and is deeply enmeshed with the industry. Dzau has served on the board of multiple pharmaceutical companies, a medical devices company, and PepsiCo – and has become a multimillionaire as a result. The revolving doors between academia, government, and industry have effectively led to a situation where it's now extremely difficult, if not impossible, to trust conventional health advice, even if it comes from supposedly reputable institutions. Unfortunately today, even organizations that appear to be an independent “trusted” source for health information are typically very much intertwined with and beholden to industry, including Big Pharma and junk-food giants, and their health recommendations reflect this.