Here at Nature Medicine, we routinely ask our authors to fill in forms declaring whether they have any financial ties to the pharmaceutical or medical device industry that could constitute a conflict-of-interest. And we typically ask people to list other financial backers such as government agencies and medical charities in the acknowledgements section more as a token of thanks than as a disclaimer of any undue influence. But according to a new study published this week in PLoS Medicine, even links with seemingly charitable organizations could present conflicts given that many major philanthropies harbor strong ties to the corporate world.
A team led by David Stuckler, a health economist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, analyzed the financial dealings of five of the world’s largest global health organizations — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the WK Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation — which together have an annual revenue exceeding $7 billion. The researchers found that all five organizations held substantial stakes in key food and drug makers that stand to benefit from the ‘nonprofit’ work in the developing world.
Take the Gates Foundation. Last year, the Seattle-based philanthropy teamed up with the Coca-Cola Company to fund an $11.5 million initiative aimed at putting Ugandan farmers to work producing fruit for Coca-Cola brand juices. Sounds commendable enough. But the authors of the recent study point out that the Gates Foundation is one of the largest stakeholders of Coca-Cola and several key foundation leaders have corporate ties with the Atlanta-based soft drink manufacturer.
And here’s another questionable move from the Microsoft founder’s charity. In 2005, the Gates Foundation awarded more than $100 million to the PATH malaria initiative to facilitate the development of malaria vaccine created by GlaxoSmithKline. Then, a year later, the organization named GSK’s head of research and development, Tachi Yamada, as the director of their global health program.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But worth disclosing.
Looking ahead, Stuckler and his colleagues call on global health philanthropies to adopt full disclosure or transparency measures, and to mandate that foundation board members with corporate links recuse themselves from grant-making decisions related to their affiliated companies.
Critics fear, however, that the additional burdens and costs of disclosure may dissuade businesses from partnering in the healthcare field. And with physicians facing greater scrutiny over their own corporate connections, non-profit organizations may be encouraged to walk away from industrial partnerships, making it that much harder to meet the needs in the developing world.
The Gates Foundation declined to comment specifically on the conclusions of the study, providing only the following statement: “The foundation is committed to the highest levels of integrity in its work, taking seriously the questions of conflicts of interest that private foundations face. We consider dialogue to be beneficial to the field and to our own work as a grantmaker.”