[Ip-health] Wikileaks reports on IFPMA infiltration of WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://keionline.org/node/718

Wikileaks reports on IFPMA infiltration of WHO Expert Working Group on
R&D Financing

Created 9 Dec 2009 - 6:11am

On Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:42PM (EST), the site Wikileaks,
posted this pithy entry on Twitter: "Big Pharma infiltrates WHO Expert
Working Group process; WikiLeaks infiltrates Big Pharma [1]". This
Wikileaks entry provides a treasure trove of documentation showing
that the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers &
Associations (IFPMA) had access to documents of the Expert Working
Group on R&D Financing (EWG) including: 1) a non-public draft report
of the WHO EWG [2], 2) a non-public Comparative Analysis done by the
EWG, [3] 3) the IFPMA Overview of the EWG Comparative Analysis [4], 4)
an IFPMA summary slide on the EWG Draft Report [5] and 5) an internal
IFPMA email (dated December 1) to its Public Health Advocacy Committee
(PHAC) on the status of the EWG process. [6]

These set of documents show the regulatory capture of the EWG process
by the pharmaceutical industry. It is rather telling, as evidenced by
the internal IFPMA email to its Public Health Advocacy Committee
(PHAC) on December 1, 2009, that the pharmaceutical industry had
possession of draft report of the Expert Working Group (without
recommendations) at least 5 months before the presentation of the
final report of the EWG to WHO Member States at the 63rd World Health
Assembly in 2010.

The internal IFPMA (December 1, 2009) email states:

     As discussed last week during our teleconference, please find
attached the draft report of the EWG. We received this document
confidentially and we would kindly advise you to not share it outside
of our industry network....While the overall result is in line with
most of the industry positions on this matter, please note that the
EWG is currently meeting and there is still room for them to introduce
new language. We will update you as new information become available,
and will keep monitoring closely the process in these days, should any
input be requested from friendly EWG Members.

It should be noted that the 3rd and final meeting of the EWG took
place from November 30 to December 2, 2009. During the EWG process, no
public interest NGOs were invited by the EWG to make presentations;
only the pharmaceutical industry, the Gates Foundation and PDPs have
had access to EWG members. This IFPMA email reveals that during the
3rd meeting of the EWG, the IFPMA somehow obtained a draft copy of the
EWG report at a critical juncture during the EWG process where
recommendations were being finalized. The IFPMA communication quietly
exults in the fact that the report "is in line with most of the
industry positions" and advises its members [7] which include Pfizer,
GSK, Sanofi-Aventis, Eli Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim and Roche that
opportunities existed for the IFPMA and its member companies to
"introduce new language" into the EWG report.

Thanks to the courageous actions of a pharmaceutical industry "Deep
Throat", the responsiveness of the WHO Expert Working Group to
industry lobbying is reflected in the telltale fingerprints of the
IFPMA on the Wikileaks documents. The word "trust"is often invoked by
the leadership of WHO; how Member States react to these leaks will be
on the cards at the meeting of the WHO Executive Board in January 2010.

KEI is producing an analysis of the draft EWG report, and it will be
disseminated shortly.




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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997