[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Here's an article filled with potential conflicts of interest and medical ethics
So put on your ethics hat and try to figure out what you think.

It's a rather long article and I have not tried to post all the issues,
but it involves:
* multiple for-profit pharmaceutical corporations,
* a well known not-for-profit (tax exempt) foundation,
* NIH grants of tax-payer $ for prior research and
* special grants of tax-payer $ for orphan diseases
* insider/private (?) employee stock trades
* foundation committees writing treatment guidelines for marketing
etc.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MedPage Today - John Fauber, Reporter, - May 19, 2013
Cystic Fibrosis: Charity and Industry Partner for Profit

So now comes the second chapter in this saga....

Are risks worth the rewards when nonprofits act like venture capitalists?
The Washington Post - Brady Dennis - July 2,2015

By the late 1990s, the Bethesda-based Cystic Fibrosis Foundation had spent decades
searching for ways to alter the course of the deadly lung disease. …

But frustrated that no game-changing treatments were in sight,
the group’s leaders in 1999 placed what many considered a risky bet,
deciding to invest millions of dollars in a small California biotech firm.

Robert J. Beall, the foundation’s president, believed that putting money into drug companies directly,
rather than merely making grants to academic investigators,
might persuade the industry to focus on the disease and turn research into real-world treatments…

That initial bet, which over time grew into a $150 million investment, has paid off in a big way.

And last fall, the CF Foundation sold its rights to future royalties from the drugs for $3.3 billion,
the largest windfall of its kind for a charitable organization.<snip>

Venture philanthropy has its skeptics, who argue that patient groups risk harming their reputations
and their bank accounts by forming partnerships with the drug industry.
Some experts worry that the relationships create inherent conflicts of interest
and that nonprofits could allow financial motives to undermine their primary mission of putting patients first.

[Examples are:]
Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation<snip>
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society <snip>
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation<snip>

Some bets don’t pay off.
The CF Foundation has invested nearly $450 million in several dozen companies
over time as part of its venture philanthropy efforts.
Some projects have ended in disappointment, and others probably will, too, Beall said.
But to him, the risks are worth the potential rewards.
<snip>