LAUSR

0 Total citations Six groups of speakers participate in US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory meetings: (1) FDA staff, (2) employees of the sponsoring company, (3) voting members, (4) patient and consumer representatives, (5) public speakers, and (6) experts speaking on behalf of a pharmaceutical company. Financial conflict of interest has been established in all but one of these groups, specifically voting members, patient and consumer representatives, and public speakers. Among FDA staff, subsequent employment in the biopharmaceutical industry is prevalent. And, all employees of the sponsoring company are, by definition, conflicted. To our knowledge, no investigation has focused on experts speaking on behalf of a pharmaceutical company, in terms of either the extent of their financial conflict of interest or whether it is correlated with metrics of academic reputation and success.