Many Avandia defenders have drug co. ties: study

Just lose the weight and avoid the Type 2, i.e., fat person, diabetes.

Virtually all of the experts who wrote favorably about troubled diabetes drug Avandia had financial ties to drug makers, a finding that shows the need for reform of such relationships, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

A team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, combed through more than 200 scientific studies and commentaries that offered positive opinions about Avandia after a May 2007 study suggested the drug significantly increased the risk of heart attacks.

They found that 94 percent of the authors who defended the drug -- known generically as rosiglitazone and made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc's -- had ties to drug companies, and nearly half had financial ties that presented a conflict of interest.

Really.