[Ip-health] Pharma-linked NGOs in the IGWG process

[robert weissman]

  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 at:

<http://www.essentialaction.org/access/index.php?/archives/82-Pharma-Links-of-NGOs-in-the-WHO-IGWG-process.html>
<http://www.essentialaction.org/access/uploads/igwg.contributorlinks.rtf>
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.