Industry Funding of Cancer Patient Advocacy Organizations - Mayo Clinic Proceedings

 Mayo Clinic Proceedings

 This study is limited in that although the search is a systematic sample of PAOs, it is not a comprehensive analysis of all cancer PAOs. We encourage other investigators to study this issue in other data sets. Moreover, this study may underestimate sponsorship because 23.5% of the PAOs (n=16) neither acknowledged funding nor a policy precluding it.

Whether the rate of biopharmaceutical industry sponsorship we noted is appropriate is outside the scope of this article. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have argued that “[d]rugmakers have a natural alliance with patient groups.”⁵ The present investigation merely shows that the rate of this alliance is sizable.