[A]mong 20 authors of the guidelines for treatment of depression, dipolar disorder and schizophrenia, 18 had at least one financial tie to a drug maker, and 12 had ties in at least three categories, such as consulting, research grants, speaking fees or stock ownership.The guidelines are a powerful influence on the way doctors treat patients. This week, big-name docs argued in a JAMA paper that medical specialty groups, which put out the guidelines, should tightly limit their funding from industry. (Drug trade group PhRMA responded that industry funding helps doctors obtain important medical information.) Earlier this year, amid news that many heart-disease guidelines aren’t backed up by rigorous scientific testing, an editorial in JAMA argued that guidelines “often have become marketing tools for device and pharmaceutical manufacturers.”
via Authors of Psychiatric Guidelines Get Funding from Drug Makers - Health Blog - WSJ.
In the referenced Boston Globe article one of the authors Dr. Roy Perlis, after noting that the guidelines in his area promote generics and non-pharmeceutical interventions states:
"My job is to find better treatments for my patients. These are awful illnesses. People really suffer," he said. "And the people who are most responsible for developing new treatments right now are the pharmaceutical companies. What is being lost in all this is that if I didn't work with them, I couldn't do my job as a scientist - the part of my job that says we have people who are suffering that need new treatments."
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