Drug Company Pulls Funding After Conference Criticism
Adriane Fugh-Berman, an Associate Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, recounts her experience of speaking at a recent medical conference in New Mexico on the topic of drug industry influence in medical education. "Immediately after my talk, one pharmaceutical company representative announced to a conference organiser that her company would no longer support the annual conference. Another packed up his exhibit and walked out," she writes in the British Medical Journal. "The drug industry is happy to play the generous and genial uncle until physicians want to discuss subjects that are off limits, such as the benefits of diet or exercise, or the relationship between medicine and pharmaceutical companies." Instead of depending on drug companies funding of professional training, she argues it would be better if doctors "could actually pay for our continuing education, as do lawyers, accountants, business people, and aerobics teachers, to mention a few."
Degrees of Dependency: Drug Companies & Patient Groups
In a survey of 29 U.S. patient groups, New Scientist found only two ruled out drug company funding. Seven of the patient groups surveyed received less than 5% of their income from drug companies, while others were reliant on them for over one-third of their budget. The Colorectal Cancer Coalition receives approximately 81% of its budget from drug companies while a PR consultant for the Neuropathy Association claimed funding sources was "proprietary" information. Joel Lexchin, from York University in Toronto, Canada said "groups should publicise how much money they've gotten from which companies and what it is used for." Even though patient groups dismiss the idea that funding influences their advocacy, Lexchin is unpersuaded: "psychologists talk about the 'gift relationship'. The patient organisations are getting something and feel the need to repay that gift. Whether they are conscious of it or not is really irrelevant."
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