Dr Ian Gibson MP has said he feels ‘“very silly and stupid”:http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/3489/9/’ about his support for Cancer United the latest patient pressure group exposed as funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

Now it seems that there are a whole host of other connections between the drug companies and both patient groups and the All Party Group on Cancer which Gibson chairs.

As it turns out Cancer United is being run by the Brussels office of Weber Shandwick, the PR company owned by one of the worlds biggest spin conglomerates Interpublic.

In a flurry of letters supporting Cancer United we glimpse more connections between patient groups and the industry.

The Guardian broke the story on Wednesday 18 October:

Cancer United, which is due to be launched with a fanfare in Brussels tomorrow, is being presented as a pioneering effort by a coalition of doctors, nurses and patients to push for equal access to cancer care across the EU. However, the campaign is being entirely funded by Roche, the maker of Herceptin and Avastin. A senior company executive sits on the board. The company’s PR firm Weber Shandwick is the secretariat and has been heavily promoting it to clinicians and journalists. And the principal study on which it is based has been hotly contested – and was also funded by Roche.

Roche say :

__From the outset, Roche has always maintained complete transparency about the funding of the Cancer United initiative. The funding provided by Roche takes the form of an unrestricted grant and there are no conditions attached to the support. Professor John Smyth, chairman of Cancer United, made it clear when inviting members of the executive board that this was a coalition of all groups involved in cancer care, including industry.

Catherine Steele, Roche__

Perhaps Dr. Gibson was not listening, but, according to Channel Four News he states that ‘he’d been conned and had no idea the campaign was connected to the pharmaceutical giant’.

Nevertheless the next letter also defended Cancer United:

__Recent criticism of the funding of a new campaign called Cancer United is unfounded and disappointing. To suggest that the focus of the campaign is the marketing of new drugs is very wide of the mark. We would not be part of such an initiative. We need one standard of care for all European cancer patients. That is what Cancer United sets out to achieve. Now is the time to act through the introduction of comprehensive national cancer plans in every country of the EU to achieve this.

Tom Hudson
Chairman, Europa Uomo

Ingrid Kössler
President, Swedish Breast Cancer Association

Anita Waldmann
President, Myeloma Euronet

Cancer United__

Who, you may ask, are Europa Uomo and Myeloma Euronet? Hold that thought, because up next in the letters page was another supporter of Cancer United. This time it was the president of the European Men’s Health Forum, who had attended the Cancer United launch. Ever heard of them? It turns out that it ‘aims to promote the health and well-being of boys and men in Europe’. They have a policy on relations with the corporate world:

The Forum has relied – and still depends – on its partnerships with commercial organisations for a significant proportion of its core and project costs. It is essential, therefore, that the Forum establishes a strict, clear and transparent policy for collaboration and partnership. Such a policy will benefit both the Forum and other organisations by ensuring that the Forum remains independent and autonomous and that there can be no actual or perceived improper influence on its work.

Whether, there is any actual improper influence on its work is difficult to tell, since the forum does not disclose the funding it ‘depends on’ from the private sector. Nor does it detail what it is for and what proportion of its budget is from private sources. this is not a ‘strict, clear or transparent’ policy. As for the perception of improper influence: I perceive it to be improper for the forum not to diclose the funding it gets. Europa Uomo is a European alliance for Prostate Cancer. On its website it notes that it is a campaign organisation and that ‘to control the social burden of the disease and its eventual prevention, increased resources are necessary to ensure permanent advances in research and patient care.’ Have they not noticed that the increased resources from the public sector are exactly what the industry is after? A tour of their website reveals no information on whther they take corporate funding and if so how much. Myeloma Euronet have a ‘“transparent approach to working with commercial companies”:http://www.myeloma-euronet.org/en/myeloma-euronet/fundingpolicy.php’ which is intended ‘to ensure the Network maintains its independence from commercial influences.’ Myeloma Euronet does disclose sponsorship and grants from Ortho Biotech, Novartis Pharma AG, Pharmion Ltd and Roche. but its transparency does not extend to the purpose of the grants or the amounts or the proportion of their total budget. It is, in other words, not very transparent.

But can we assume that at least the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer which Dr ian Gibson chairs is free of corporate influence? A further letter in the guardian suggests not: ‘The all-party cancer group receives support from Cancerbackup, a cancer charity… to the tune of £6,000 each by the following drug companies: AstraZeneca, Lilly, Novartis, Ortho Biotech, Pfizer, Roche and Sanofi-Aventis, as well as £5,000 from Merck. Dr Gibson said he feels “very silly and stupid” about his support for Cancer United, which received some funding from Roche. How, then, does he feel about chairing an all-party group funded by almost all the leading lights of the drug manufacturing world?

Dr Gibson did not feel very silly about this though, because as he explained in a subesequent letter. This was sponsoorship and not funding:

It is not sponsorship from drugs companies as such to which I object, but rather the less than transparent support, and implied involvement, from a single company, as in the case of Cancer United. Sponsorship of our conference has always been publicly and widely declared. None of the sponsors are involved in determining the conference’s programme or the APPG’s work. Officers of the APPG determine these. Cancerbackup provides the secretariat to the APPG and cancer charities provide support in the form of a stakeholders’ group. But all-party groups receive no government funding and without such support we would be unable to hold our valuable cancer policy conference.

So that’s alright then.