Can you trust your advocacy organization to disclose their ties to big pharma? Looks like there’s only a one-in-four chance that you can.

The study analyzed data from Eli Lilly & Co. from the first half of 2007 and found that only 25 percent of 161 organizations disclosed funding from the drug giant on their Web sites. Just 18 percent acknowledged Lilly’s grants in their annual reports, and 1 percent listed Lilly on a corporate sponsors page.

Source: Advocacy groups fail to disclose drug company funding, a new study finds – chicagotribune.com

I see disturbing parallels between modern-day pharmaceutical practices regarding sponsorships and what asbestos companies used to do.  For decades, asbestos companies doled out funding to organizations that would produce scientific research that was in line with the interests of asbestos companies.  They then used this secretly corporate-funded research to defend themselves in court.

I’m glad more pharmaceutical companies are starting to disclose who they give money to, but I’m saddened that so many advocacy groups don’t want their members to know whose money the organizations take.