TGA pharma fees risk public confidence: expert.

Australian Doctor,  January, 2007  

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By Arjun Ramachandran

THE Therapeutic Goods Administration's reliance on fees from the pharmaceutical industry to fund its assessment of new drugs could undermine public confidence in the regulator, an expert says.

Higher levels of industry funding were associated with faster processing of applications and a higher rate of approvals, according to research by Professor Joel Lexchin, from the school of health policy and management at YorkUniversity in Toronto, Canada.

"As industry contributions to the budgets of these organisations increased, review times dropped and the ...

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