Hi guys. Continuing our exploration of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on health and health policy at a global level, in this Causes or Cures podcast, I have a conversation with Emily Rickard about her research on how the industry influences the UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Groups. She will explain what the All-Party Parliamentary Groups, particularly the health-related ones, are and what they do. She’ll talk about both the direct and indirect ways the pharmaceutical industry influences those groups and why that matters from both a transparency issue and a health-policy one. Emily is a researcher and doctoral student with the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Bath.

In case you’ve missed earlier episodes having to do with industry’s influence on healthcare and health policy, I am linking to a few of them below. I encourage you guys to listen to some of them, just so you can get an idea of how vast industry’s influence is. While I knew it was a problem and wanted to focus on industry’s influence as a 2022 podcast topic, I didn’t even know how deep and wide it went until I started interviewing various researchers and stakeholders for Causes or Cures. While it’s deeply discouraging that money has so much power when it comes to people’s health, it’s great that there are researchers like Emily who are analyzing industry’s influence in a systematic way and sharing those results with the world. My part is getting them on the podcast to help inform people and hopefully encourage ideas for solutions. Further, dwindling trust in conventional health and public health people and institutions is well documented. We are heading towards an all-out scientific trust crisis, and industry’s ridiculous amount of influence over healthcare and health policy only fuels the trust crisis. If we do nothing, science as we know it is in deep trouble.

Here is a great podcast on the regulatory capture of science. You should know what those words mean and how regulatory capture biases health policies towards profit not people. You may have heard about the “ghost management” of medicine. This has to do with how articles are published in high-impact journals, ghost writers and how journals make money from industry. Dr. Sismondo is an expert on the topic and wrote a book about ghost-managed medicine. I did a podcast with him here, and he’ll also tell you more about “epistemic corruption” and the medical sciences. Along with regulatory capture, epistemic corruption should also join your vocabulary. Dr. Parker came on the podcast to discuss her research on how industry influences drug and therapeutic decisions at hospitals throughout Australia. (I’m exploring this issue on a global level.). You can listen to it here. I also just recorded a podcast with her and another physician on how industry influences patient advocacy groups. I hope to edit that next week and post it.

There are lots more Causes or Cures Podcast related to industry’s influence on health, but there’s a variety of scientific topics that might interest you. You can check out the podcast here.

Here is the link to the podcast on UK’s All-Party Parliamentary Groups.

Thank you to everyone who subscribes, shares and reposts my podcast. I really appreciate it.

Eeks :)