"Drug Makers Are Advocacy Group’s Biggest Donors
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: October 21, 2009
WASHINGTON — A majority of the donations made to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one of the nation’s most influential disease advocacy groups, have come from drug makers in recent years, according to Congressional investigators.
The alliance, known as NAMI, has long been criticized for coordinating some of its lobbying efforts with drug makers and for pushing legislation that also benefits industry.
Last spring, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent letters to the alliance and about a dozen other influential disease and patient advocacy organizations asking about their ties to drug and device makers. The request was part of his investigation into the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine.
The mental health alliance, which is hugely influential in many state capitols, has refused for years to disclose specifics of its fund-raising, saying the details were private.
But according to investigators in Mr. Grassley’s office and documents obtained by The New York Times, drug makers from 2006 to 2008 contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations."
New York Times Link
Search for "grassley" to see our previous posts on this matter; here is one -
http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/05/most-nami-money-is-from-psychiatric.html
Some day NAMI will have an interesting section at Little Sis.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
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