Published 21 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a929
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a929

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Senator asks psychiatrists’ association about drug company funding

¹ New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A leading member of the US Senate has asked the American Psychiatric Association to account for money it has received from drug companies.

Leading psychiatrists have previously been criticised by Charles Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, because of incidents of incomplete disclosure of funding (BMJ 2008;336:1327, 14 Jun doi: 10.1136/bmj.39609.364688.DB).

Senator Grassley said in a letter to the association, "It is alleged that pharmaceutical companies give money to non-profits in an attempt to garner favor in ways that increase sales of their products."

The senator is the leading Republican member of the Senate’s Committee on Finance, which oversees medical care for 80 million Americans who are covered by the government health insurance programmes Medicare, for people over 65, and Medicaid, for people on low incomes.

He asked the association, which represents 38 000 psychiatrists, to provide him with "an accounting of industry funding that pharmaceutical companies and/or . . . [Full text of this article]

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