AIDS TREATMENT NEWS Policy on Pharmaceutical-Company Revenue

AIDS TREATMENT NEWS has always had a policy of not accepting grants or contributions from companies whose products we cover or might cover. At the same time, we have never objected to other newsletters or organizations which do accept such income, and as a result can provide services more widely than we can. But our particular focus on investigative reporting requires maximum independence.

While we do not accept grants or contributions, we have always sold subscriptions, including to companies whose products we cover. In the last year we have become concerned about how to handle large orders, either for bulk subscriptions (a large number of subscriptions to different people in the same organization), or for a large number of copies of a single issues. Until a year ago, the total revenue from all our large orders (which we define as more than five subscriptions to the same organization, or more than five copies of a single issue) never accounted for more than 5% of our total income. But from January 1996 to date, the total from large orders has been almost 13 percent of our annual income. (The large orders are not only from pharmaceutical companies, but also include nonprofit or government organizations.)

We would never accept a subscription or other order tied in any way to an article; we did turn down one large order for that reason. But readers might also be concerned about what issues we take up, when our plate is always overflowing with potential stories we could cover. If an issue on the edge of the plate would be embarrassing to a large subscriber, might it fall off when it would not have otherwise? Could this bias our coverage, now or later?

We have not found a completely satisfactory policy on large orders. If we refuse to sell more than five subscriptions to one organization, we would be restricting our information from those who want it. If we allow the companies to reprint and distribute the information on their own for the additional subscribers, they will not get around to doing it; no such arrangement has ever worked for us, as it is too much out of their way for companies to set up an internal printing and distribution operation twice a month just for AIDS TREATMENT NEWS. If we send the additional subscriptions free or at cost, we are subsidizing some of the world's richest companies, at the cost of services we could be providing for our readers.

AIDS TREATMENT NEWS is entirely self-financed, almost all from subscriptions (we have also received a small proportion of our income from bequests and from unsolicited gifts). We have never accepted advertising, and always had a sliding scale so that we do not turn away people who cannot pay. We operate on under $300,000 per year, which includes premium, fast-turnaround printing, and first-class postage for subscriptions and for everything else we mail. We could do more if we had more resources. Therefore, we must think carefully before ruling out large orders as a potential income source.

For now we have decided to periodically disclose the proportion of our income which comes from large orders. We cannot, of course, disclose individual orders, since the privacy of our subscribers is absolute. We may develop additional policies in this area, and would like to hear from our readers about what you think is important.

Trips and Meals

In order to cover treatment news, we need to attend meetings in which companies present information about their products and/or research. Occasionally we have accepted travel and hotel expenses to attend; this happens about once or twice a year, and we do not use these trips for other business or personal purposes. Whenever we attend or speak at FDA Advisory Committee hearings, we always travel entirely at our own expense.

More common are business meals, including receptions at conferences. We need to attend these meetings as part of our news gathering. So far we have accepted the meals, which are rarely worth more than $25, as it has seemed more awkward than it is worth to insist on a separate check, or to refrain from eating at the receptions.

Note

To complete our disclosure, additional items should be listed.

In 1992 AIDS TREATMENT NEWS received a $2,000 contribution from Burroughs Wellcome Co. Instead of returning it, we signed the check over to a New York treatment activist, now deceased, so that he could attend the International Conference on AIDS in Amsterdam and present information on alternative treatments.

At about that time we received a microwave oven from APP, a mail-order pharmacy. We donated it to the Center for Positive Care, at that time a San Francisco agency set up as a common location for AIDS/HIV service organizations.

In 1993 AIDS TREATMENT NEWS collaborated with IGLHRC, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, to publish a special International Edition of our newsletter; we had treatment information, IGLHRC had international contacts. The edition was to appear four times a year, and consist mainly of reprints of treatment articles of most importance internationally, especially for developing countries. Despite considerable research we could not find any U.S. foundation willing to fund this project. In view of the importance of treatment information for people in developing countries, we decided to make a one-time exception to our policy on industry funding, and applied to several pharmaceutical companies. None of them were willing to fund the International Edition, however, so we did not receive any money. We published three issues at our own expense, then phased out this project in favor of Internet distribution, which is more effective and costs us almost nothing to reach people worldwide.

Note: AIDS TREATMENT NEWS is not organized as a nonprofit, but as a sole proprietorship owned by its founder, John S. James. It does not accumulate a profit, but spends the money it receives on improving the newsletter and services. We are currently developing a nonprofit to take on the charitable work (including subscriptions to prisoners, organizations in developing countries, and others who cannot afford a subscription) that we have been doing for free.