Patient organisations are instrumental to social movements, but they can also be a vehicle for commercial interests, cautions Portuguese sociologist Noemia Lopes of the Instituto Superior de Ciencias de Saude Egas Moniz.
Drawing on several examples from Portugal, Lopes and others cite disclosure policies, donor-recipient interaction guidelines and maintaining a variety of income sources as strategies that could diffuse any dependency on corporate cash.
Read the full article in Diario de Leiria in Portuguese (20 April 2010)
Katrina Perehudoff