Front Groups?
(Excerpt from an article on CorpWatch)
The pharmaceutical industry has long donated money to patient advocacy groups that critics say become conduits for spreading industry-friendly information.
In the world of ADHD advocacy, CHADD, based in Landover, MD, is an 800-pound gorilla, claiming 20,000 members and 200 affiliates, even offering members a CHADD Visa Card. Though the organization, which also engages in lobbying, claims to provide "science-based, evidence-based information about ADHD" to parents and the public, critics say CHADD basically promotes stimulant medications manufactured by its corporate donors. Pharmaceutical companies - including Novartis and McNeil - donated a total of $674,000 in fiscal year 2002-2003, making up 17 percent of the group's budget, according to CHADD financial documents posted on its website.
Pelham, who is currently listed by CHADD as a member of its professional advisory board, came face to face with what he says are the group's glaring conflicts of interest.
In 2002, after he received the CHADD Hall of Fame Award, he was subsequently interviewed for Attention!, the organization's magazine. In the interview, Pelham said, among other things, that stimulant drugs have serious limitations when employed alone and at high doses. He also pointed out that psychosocial treatments should be the treatment of first choice in ADHD, with adjunctive medication when necessary.
But eight months later, after CHADD's board of directors tried to quash the article, CHADD published Pelham's interview - but with large swaths cut out, particularly his comments about the limitations of the stimulants.
"In recent years, I have come to believe that the individuals who advocate most strongly in favor of medication - both those from the professional community, including the National Institutes of Mental Health, and those from advocacy groups, including CHADD - have major and undisclosed conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies that deal with ADHD products," Pelham wrote in a foreword to the unedited version of the article he provided AlterNet. "I believe that parents of ADHD children and the public at large should be made aware of this situation. That is one of the points that I was attempting to make in my interview. As I think is clear from examining the edited sections, the CHADD CEO and board of directors did not share my concerns."
Chadd officials say their board is not involved in any aspects of the magazine and that some of Pelham's claims "were not scientifically supported."
"CHADD did not withhold information because of pressure from pharmaceutical companies," says Phyllis Anne Teeter Ellison, who chairs the editorial advisory board for the magazine. "After extensive review and consultation with the scientific community, CHADD took a responsible position by not publishing some of Dr. Pelham's unsubstantiated claims that were not supported by available data and were not supported by his colleagues on the MTA group."
But some drug makers no doubt find the magazine interesting: Peg Nichols, CHADD's director of communications and executive editor of Attention!, confirmed that Shire Pharmaceuticals, makers of the stimulant medication Adderall, buys 65,000 of the 100,000 copies each print run. Shire sales representatives, in turn, place them in doctors' offices.
Pelhams suspects his comments in the article, while edited heavily, were still "conservative" enough to cause problems with his pharmaceutical industry contacts. For several years, Pelham has hosted a conference on treatment for childhood mental health disorders for which drug companies, including McNeil and Shire, have provided educational grants. Since the article ran, he says his former contacts have not underwritten the conference.