Doctors who write guidelines often have ties to the drug industry

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7523.982-a

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Janice Hopkins Tanne

New York

About a third of authors who write practice guidelines in the United States have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, a survey by the journal Nature has discovered (2005;437: 1070-1). About 70% of writing panels were affected.

Nature's journalists surveyed 215 guidelines deposited with the US National Guideline Clearinghouse in 2004. All 215 guidelines concerned drugs. But only 90 contained details of the authors' conflicts of interest, and, of these, only 31 guidelines …