This is an important consideration that has only increased since this paper was published. To read the discussion, click the link below.
This discussion paper explores these debates from the critical perspective of a women’s health advocacy group that does not accept pharmaceutical company funds. :
“Throughout the health sector, pharmaceutical companies are now an important source of funding. As part of their marketing strategies, drug companies provide grants and other support to patient groups and disease-specific organizations. As a result, many groups receive funds from the same companies that are directly affected by policy questions central to their advocacy. Organizations receive tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, sometimes more, from the drug industry for projects such as conferences, publications, web sites, and advocacy training.5 This trend is occurring at the same time that health researchers, peer-reviewed medical journals, physicians’ professional associations, bioethicists and whistleblowers within drug regulatory agencies are raising red flags over conflicts of interest arising from pharmaceutical company funding in their respective communities. The focus of the present discussion is Canada, but the same phenomenon has attracted attention in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.6
Some women’s health groups still play a watchdog role towards both industry and government. These groups have raised alarms about the ties between the pharmaceutical industry and health advocacy groups. The dominant model in Canada, as elsewhere, however, is the professionalized health advocacy group with industry partnerships. These groups rarely criticize industry practices. Since drugs harmful to women’s health continue to make headlines (some recent examples are HRT, Diane 35 and Accutane), the weakened influence of non-profit groups that speak out on health protection issues is a threat to women’s health. “
For more, click this link to read the article:
whp-apsf.ca/pdf/corpFunding...
We all need to be smart. In this time of what amounts to a corporate takeover of societies and governments, and their propensity for profit at all costs, and their infiltration into all aspects of information that the public is given, the full picture is critical. Part of informed consent regarding health and health treatments should include full and honest disclosure of important controversies regarding disease, and drugs. Downplaying harm people have experienced from drug treatment is not full disclosure or informed consent. Good luck people. Be cautious.
For those who don’t wish to read the entire paper here is an important quotation from the paper regarding of some of their findings:
Conflicts of Interest or Corruption?
Ethicist Carl Elliott, who has written about drug industry funding throughout the medical community,66 questions whether “conflict of interest” adequately captures the impact of such funding in the medical milieu. Elliott worries that the term individualizes what is in fact a systemic corruption of institutions meant to serve the public good. He points to particular practices, such as pharma-funded ghostwritten articles in peer review journals and the suppression of negative clinical trial results, which go beyond mere conflict of interest to corruption.67
In the case of advocacy groups, the pharmaceutical industry’s use of voluntary groups to covertly manipulate policy debates arguably falls into the latter category. More generally, the very pervasiveness of pharmaceutical money in medical research, medical publishing, medical education, bioethics, pharmaceutical regulatory agencies and patient advocacy organizations creates a for-profit environment that inhibits healthy debate of pharmaceutical policy issues.
