New guidelines issued by the Cochrane Collaboration prohibit industry funding of Cochrane reviews. The guidelines followed revelations that a drug company with a stake in a Cochrane review provided funding for the review (BMJ 2003; 327: 924-6).
Under the new rules, Cochrane review groups will not be allowed to receive any funding from “commercial sources with financial interests in the conclusions of Cochrane reviews.” The collaboration reviews health interventions and disseminates the information worldwide.
Some Cochrane members opposed the restrictions, saying they would threaten the organization's financial viability. But Dr. James Neilson, co-chair of the collaboration's steering group, said the decision reflected the “overwhelming agreement of the steering group and the members of the collaboration that there needs to be a clear separation between production of reviews and commercial sponsorship.
Neilson wasn't sure about the financial impact of the decision. “There are some entities that will find themselves in some difficulty, but that's why there is a transition period to allow them to seek alternate sources of funding.”
Dr. Gordon Guyatt of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., said governmental agencies have not given the support the collaboration needs. “Look at the human genome project. What Cochrane is doing is at least as important and yet it receives less than 1/1000th of the funding.”
Health Canada has funded the Canadian Cochrane Centre previously, but spokesperson Paige Raymond Kovac “couldn't say what the future will hold.”
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research currently fund the Centre; however, Sonja Corkrum, vice president of knowledge translation, said other models of research dissemination are competing for funds.
The new guidelines also establish a central fund that could accept industry funding and a “funding arbiter” position to manage potential conflict of interest cases. — Jeanne Lenzer, Kingston, NY