[Ip-health] Corporate sponsors of the George Institute

[thiru@keionline.org]

http://keionline.org/node/758

By thiru
Created 18 Jan 2010 - 9:45am
Corporate sponsors of the George Institute

As the 126th session of the Executive Board (EB) of the World Health
Organization unfolds today, it appears that the EB will consider
agenda item 4.3 on Public health, innovation and intellectual
property: Global strategy and plan of action [1]. Under scrutiny will
be the work of the Expert Working Group on research and development
financing which is mandated by resolution WHA61.21

     (7) to establish urgently a results-oriented and time-limited
expert working group to examine current financing and coordination of
research and development, as well as proposals for new and innovative
sources of funding to stimulate research and development related to
Type II and Type III diseases and the specific research and
development needs of developing countries in relation to Type I
diseases, and open to consideration of proposals from Member States,
and to submit a progress report to the Sixty-second World Health
Assembly and the final report to the Sixty-third World Health Assembly
through the Executive Board;

It should be noted that WHA61.21 instructed the EWG to submit its
final report to the 63th WHA (May 2010) THROUGH the Executive Board,
so there is some drama at the EB, given opposition to the report from
several public health NGOs, as well as critical comments by some
governments and at least one member of the WHO EWG. The final report
[2] was only published on January 15 (Friday evening) in English. In
its acknowledgments section, Mary Moran, Director of the Health Policy
Division of the George Institute for International Health, is credited
with providing background reports for the EWG's consideration. In
particular, Mary Moran played a critical role in preparing section 5
of the EWG report on Innovative Sources of Financing which dealt with
90 proposals for financing; the report notes that "[m]aterial for this
section was drawn from a paper prepared for the Expert Working Group
on R&D Financing by Mary Moran with the assistance of a team from the
George Institute for International Health." Earlier, in a leaked email
and analysis, the IFPMA described Mary Moran as the coordinator of the
evaluations.

Given Dr. Moran and the George Institute central role in evaluating
the proposals, there has been some interest in relationship between
the George Institute and the pharmaceutical industry. Among the data
have have raised eyebrows are the extensive number of corporate
funders of the George Institute work, including the following
pharmaceutical and medical device companies:

http://www.thegeorgeinstitute.org/research/collaborators-and-funders/fun...
[3]

AMGEN
AstraZeneca
Aventis
Bayer
Boehringer Ingelheim
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Corporation Ltd
Glaxo Wellcome
Guidant Corporation (Boston Scientific Corporation)
Hoechst
Merck
Novartis
Pfizer
ResMed Inc
Respironics (Philips)
Sanofi-Aventis
Sanofi-Synthelabo
Searle
Servier

In addition, the George Institute is funded by several disease
specific organizations that receive significant corporate funding,
such as Kidney Health Australia (Amgen, Genzyme, Janssen-Cilag, Roche
Pty and Baxter Healthcare), or International Society of Hypertension
(http://www.ish-world.com/default.aspx?Corporate_Members [4]).

Source URL: http://keionline.org/node/758

Links:
[1] http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB126/B126_1_annotated-en.pdf
[2] http://www.who.int/phi/documents/RDFinancingwithISBN.pdf
[3]
http://www.thegeorgeinstitute.org/research/collaborators-and-funders/funders/funders_home.cfm
[4] http://www.ish-world.com/default.aspx?Corporate_Members

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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