More Conflicts of Interest: This Time on the FDA Cox-2 Panel of Experts

I was on the road this week (and air travel was not exactly on schedule due to the latest "snow event,") so I apologize for being a bit behind.
However, there still may be some who have not heard of this one.
The NY Times reported that 10 out of 32 members of the recent, highly-publicized US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on Cox-2 inhibitors had financial ties to Merck, Pfizer, or Novartis, the makers of the internationally best known drugs in this class. These apparent conflicts were not publicly disclosed prior to the panel's deliberations, and apparently would have remained unknown had not the Times investigated.
The problem, again, is not so much conflicts of interests, but efforts to hide such conflicts. It is true, of course, that it may be increasingly difficult to find "experts" on a particular drug who have not had financial dealings with the makers of that drug. But, if such experts are reluctant to publicly disclose such dealings, then their advice is suspect. So now the question is: were this panel's findings made in the interests of patients and science, versus the financial interests of the some of the participants, and of those who paid them?