http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-is-quality-of-your-data.html
Saturday,
April 11, 2009
What
Is The Quality Of Your Data?
The Federal Government has a data quality problem.
A new Data Quality Act (DQA) lawsuit was filed
Feb. 22 in a federal court in California. The suit claims that the Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
are disseminating false and misleading information regarding the health
benefits of marijuana. The lawsuit is another test of the judicial
reviewability of DQA, which enables groups and members of the public to
challenge the data quality of federal government information.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern
District of California by Americans for Safe Access in response to a denial of
an information quality challenge originally made against HHS and FDA in October
2004. The petition challenged various statements made by HHS and FDA in the
Federal Register regarding the health benefits of marijuana. For instance, the
Americans for Safe Access requested that the following statement, "There
have been no studies that have scientifically assessed the efficacy of
marijuana for any medical condition," be revised to state, "Adequate
and well-recognized studies show the efficacy of marijuana in the treatment of
nausea, loss of appetite, pain and spasticity."
Those are not the only conditions that marijuana could
ameliorate.
Here is a list
that provides links to many published studies on the efficacy of medical
marijuana. Let me just provide the "A"s section of the lists.
Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
Anxiety
Disorders
Autism
Aversive
Memories
Here is an interesting "D":
Diabetes
And near the bottom of the list:
Tourette-Syndrome
It would seem that the Federal Government and Congress have not been keeping
up. Justice Clarence Thomas
got it right in a medical marijuana case (Raich) when he said
"Congress presented no evidence in support
of its conclusions (that marijuana has no medical value - ed.) , which are not
so much findings of fact as assertions of power," and Thomas concludes:
"Congress cannot define the scope of its own power merely by declaring the
necessity of its enactments."
