Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11974

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Weissman R.
Pharma Links of NGOs in the WHO IGWG process
Essential Action Access to Medicines Project 2007 Nov 7
http://www.essentialaction.org/access/index.php?/archives/82-Pharma-Links-of-NGOs-in-the-WHO-IGWG-process.html

Full text:

Essential Action today released a report detailing the brand-name pharmaceutical industry ties of NGOs submitting comments to the second public hearing of the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property.

The full report is available here: http://www.essentialaction.org/access/uploads/igwg.contributorlinks.rtf

A pdf version of the report is available here: http://www.essentialaction.org/access/uploads/igwg.contributorlinks.pdf

The report finds that, even excluding pharmaceutical trade associations that described themselves as NGOs, NGO submissions from groups with links to the pharmaceutical industry outnumbered those from independent groups by a margin of 2 to 1.

Understanding an organization’s ties to affected industries is helpful in assessing the merits of comments submitted. Essential Action urges the WHO in the future to request that all authors disclose their financial ties to corporations, including funding sources and whether the author is a consultant, lobbyist or other representative of private industry.