Guest post: Follow the money
Originally a comment by NightCrow on Once and for all.
From Wikipedia, s.v. National Women’s Law Center, citing annual reports from 2013–2016:
The organization receives financial support from a variety of institutions aligned on women’s rights policies. This includes … reproductive health organizations, and pharmaceutical companies. Notable donors are Bayer, … Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), … among others.
For some reason, the latest annual report made public by NWLC is the one for 2015– 2016, which can be found linked from this page.
I note that Bayer Pharmaceuticals is in the list of donors who gave $100,000 and above. One of their products, Androcur, is a hormone medication used as a feminizing treatment for males.
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America is listed simply as PhRMA. They are a lobby group, reportedly. Their donation was in the $5,000 – $9,999 bracket.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer gave between $25,000 & $49,999. They sell spironolactone, a testosterone suppressant, under the trade name Aldactone.
Another donor in the $5,000 – $9,999 bracket, Agile Therapeutics, apparently offers ‘pelvic and gender health physical therapy’ to help patients having problems after ‘gender-affirming surgeries’.
The list of donors is a long one, and there may well be more on the list who are making a nice thing out of the transitioning craze.
I do wonder why National Women’s Law Center hasn’t posted any annual reports for 2016–2017, 2027–2018, 2018–2019, etc etc. They have posted annual financial statements up to 2022, but those don’t include the names of donors.
Thank you, this is useful and interesting research.
Ben Goldacre dedicated a chapter to how pharmaceutical companies sway patient- and special interest groups to their way of thinking in his 2012 book, Bad Pharma. Purely coincidentally, both Bayer and Pfizer feature throughout the book for their borderline ethics.
Acolyte of Sagan: it’s notable that Ben Goldacre wrote Bad Pharma but has been so very quiet about gender medicine. Which I find quite interesting, considering that there are no social or career penalties for asserting one side, and a great deal of both for asserting the other.
Piglet, I don’t think that’s being particularly fair to Goldacre, particularly as his career has been spent pissing off much more powerful groups than the trans lobby. He might not have written anything specifically about gender medicine but his focus on evidence-based medicine is aimed at achieving the same standards across all clinical research.