The international humanitarian medical aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) supports a wide network of medical laboratories in resource-constrained countries. In a Health in Action article in this week's PLoS Medicine, Derryck Klarkowski and Juan Daniel Orozco of MSF discuss how the organization has addressed the issue of maintaining quality control for laboratory testing.
Funding: The authors received no specific funding to write this paper.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Klarkowski DB, Orozco JD (2010) Microscopy Quality Control in Medecins Sans Frontieres Programs in Resource-Limited Settings. PLoS Med 7(1): e1000206. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000206.
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000206
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-07-01-klarkowski.pdf
CONTACT:
Derryck Klarkowski
Medecins Sans Frontieres
61 Malvina Pde
Lake Haven, NSW 2263
Australia
61-0414954815
derryck.klarkowski@gmail.com
Science must be responsible to society, not to politics
Recent high-impact collisions between health research and politics include a US Senate vote to disregard updated USPSTF guidelines for breast cancer screening, and the UK Home Secretary's dismissal of drug abuse advisor Prof. David Nutt. Considering the prospects for unbiased comparative effectiveness research in light of such events, The PLoS Medicine Editors argue that "evidence-based medicine deserves better than a push out of the frying pan of partisan politics into the fire of vested interests," and urge politicians to remember that "society encompasses not only the corporate engines of economic growth and decline, but also individuals whose lives depend on the quality of health care data."
Funding: The authors are each paid a salary by the Public Library of Science, and they wrote this editorial during their salaried time.
Competing Interests: The authors' individual competing interests are at http://www.plosmedicine.org/static/editorsInterests.action. PLoS is funded partly through manuscript publication charges, but the PLoS Medicine Editors are paid a fixed salary (their salary is not linked to the number of papers published in the journal).
Citation: The PLoS Medicine Editors (2010) Science Must Be Responsible to Society, Not to Politics. PLoS Med 7(1): e1000222. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000222
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000222
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-07-01-editorial.pdf
CONTACT:
The PLoS Medicine Editors
Journal
PLoS Medicine