More Than 80 Percent Of Patient Advocacy Groups Accept Industry Money

(Reuters Health) - An examination of more than a hundred of the largest U.S. nonprofit organizations created to improve health and fight disease has found that more than 8 in 10 get financial support from companies involved in the drug, biotechnology and medical device industry. In addition, over a third have at least one industry official on their governing board and, in 12 percent of the 104 organizations analyzed, an industry official was listed as leading the governing board. The tally raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest among groups that claim to be looking out for the best interest of patients but whose advocacy may be influenced by industries that have a financial interest in certain treatments. “Concerns have been raised that industry-supported patient-advocacy organizations have spoken out for access to drugs with questionable therapeutic benefit and remained silent on policy proposals, such as drug-pricing reforms, that might benefit their constituents,” the research team from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia writes in the New England Journal of Medicine. The influence might be even more extensive than the numbers suggest, say the authors, led by Matthew McCoy, a postdoctoral fellow in the university’s department of medical ethics and health policy. Some of the 104 groups, all with annual revenues of more than $7.5 million, don’t publish detailed information on their sources of revenue or members of their gover...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news