Commercial Funding Research Articles

What cancer care providers need to know about CAM: the CAM‐Cancer project

Abstract‘CAM‐Cancer’ is the name of a project entitled ‘Concerted Action for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Assessment in the Cancer Field’ (CAM‐Cancer). The CAM‐Cancer website (<http://www.cam‐cancer.org>) is an open‐access information resource on CAM for cancer. It provides synthesised evidence‐based information for healthcare professionals drawing on the current research status of the efficacy/effectiveness and safety of CAM for cancer. The information is presented as ‘CAM‐summaries’, which are short and concise documents presenting background information as well as an appraisal of the evidence of efficacy and safety. CAM‐summaries are peer‐reviewed and annually updated. The fully documented and published methodology ensures that CAM‐summaries are written in an independent and non‐judgemental way to maximise their use amongst health professionals. The project is led by an international panel of experts in cancer care and/or CAM research, and supported by a wide network of professionals and cancer organisations. Originally funded by the European Commission within the Fifth Framework Programme, it is now managed by the National Research Center in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NAFKAM) at the University of Tromsø, Norway. The project is entirely non‐profit and receives no commercial funding.

A randomized controlled trial of fallopian tube sperm perfusion compared with standard intrauterine insemination for women with non-tubal infertility

Does fallopian tube sperm perfusion (FSP) result in better pregnancy and live birth rates than standard intrauterine insemination (SIUI) for couples with non-tubal infertility with or without gonadotrophin or clomiphene stimulation? There was no evidence of an improvement in live birth rates with FSP compared with SIUI. Previous randomized controlled trials have suggested improved live birth rates with FSP but these trials were small. A systematic review published in 2004 suggested heterogeneity in results. This pragmatic, multicentre, randomized controlled trial compared SIUI and FSP in 417 women with non-tubal infertility. The patients were treated at fertility clinics in New Zealand, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. Four hundred and seventeen women were randomized to SIUI (n = 210) or FSP (n = 207). Data were available for analysis from 198 women in the SIUI group and 198 women in the FSP group. There were 19 women with incomplete data because of cycle cancellation or withdrawals and 2 women who conceived prior to commencing treatment. There were no significant differences in live birth rates between the two groups with 27 (12.9%) in the SIUI group and 21 in the FSP group (10.1%) [Odds Ratio (OR) 1.31 (0.71, 2.39), P = 0.48]. Two ectopic pregnancies were reported in the SIUI group and one was reported in the FSP group. Different ovulation protocols were used in the different clinics. Approximately 10% of the cycles involved donor sperm and ∼5% of the cycles did not complete the assigned intervention. There was no evidence of an improvement in live birth rates with FSP compared with SIUI. The study was funded in part by the A+ trust of the Auckland District Health Board. No commercial funding was received. ANZCTR Number ACTRN12612001303831.

What are the health implications associated with the consumption of energy drinks? A systematic review

There is increasing interest regarding the potential health effects of energy drink (ED) consumption. The aim of the present review was to investigate the existing evidence on health outcomes associated with ED consumption. Studies published between 1966 and February 2011 were retrieved and included if they met the following criteria: were randomized or pseudo randomized control trials; studied a human population; reported a health-related measure; and investigated a whole ED (as opposed to individual ingredients). Study quality was evaluated and data extracted using standardized tools. Fifteen studies were identified, the majority of which had less than 30 participants and included a short term of follow-up (range: 30 min-3 h). The following outcome measures were included: cardiorespiratory effects, physiological measures, pathological measures, and body composition. The mean dosage of ED was 390 mL (range: 250-750 mL). Commercial ED funding and/or study associations were identified in six studies. Studies investigating long-term consumption and follow-up were lacking. The findings from this review do not allow definitive dietary recommendations to be made regarding safe levels of ED consumption; caution should be exercised when consuming these drinks until further high-quality research is undertaken to substantiate findings.

Banks and Microbanks

Using two new datasets, the authors examine whether the presence of banks affects the profitability and outreach of microfinance institutions. They find evidence that competition matters. Greater bank penetration in the overall economy is associated with microbanks pushing toward poorer markets, as reflected in smaller average loans sizes and greater outreach to women. The evidence is particularly strong for microbanks relying on commercial funding and using traditional bilateral lending contracts (rather than the group lending methods favored by microfinance nongovernmental organizations). The analysis considers plausible alternative explanations for the correlations, including relationships that run through the nature of the regulatory environment and the structure of the banking environment; but it fails to find strong support for these alternative hypotheses.

Overview: A Closer Look At The ‘Remarkable Decade’

A wealth of data, providing both nuanced understanding and occasionally ‘white noise’Last year I referred to the ‘remarkable decade’ of archaeological investigation, the decade following the turn of the millennium, when Greece as a nation, and the city of Athens and Attica at large, prepared for the 2004 Olympic Games; when cities and countryside benefited in a variety of ways from the cumulative cultural investment of European Union, philanthropic and commercial funding to expand the scope of the country's heritage. New sites were investigated and new museums opened their doors, with a host of conservators and designers deployed to support them. That was before the economic downturn of 2008 and the consequent contraction of fieldwork, of professional and technical staff, and of research services in general.The fruits of the ‘remarkable decade’ are nevertheless continuing to appear in books and journals. Robert Pitt provided the first glimpse of these developments in his report on Athens and Attica (AR 57 [2010–2011] 31–48), drawing on the first fascicule of volumes 56–59 [2001–2004] of ADelt, to which archaeologists are required to report their work in the year in which it took place. ADelt is a necessarily cumbersome and slow publication, whose future is uncertain, as Cathy Morgan explained in her introduction to AG 2009–2010 (AR 56 [2009–2010] 1). The complexity of the process of collating, editing, and publishing archaeological work, of all periods, in a single book seems even less viable today as government budgets have become tightly constrained.

Guideline Funding and Conflicts of Interest

Professional societies, like many other organizations around the world, have recognized the need to use more rigorous processes to ensure that healthcare recommendations are informed by the best available research evidence. This is the fourth of a series of 14 articles prepared to advise guideline developers in respiratory and other disease. It focuses on commercial funding of guidelines and managing conflict of interest effectively in the context of guidelines. In this review, we addressed the following topics and questions. (1) How are clinical practice guidelines funded? (2) What are the risks associated with commercial sponsorship of guidelines? (3) What relationships should guideline committee members be required to disclose? (4) What is the most efficient way to obtain complete and accurate disclosures? (5) How should disclosures be publicly shared? (6) When do relationships require management? (7) How should individual conflicts of interest be managed? (8) How could conflict of interest policies be enforced? The literature review included a search of PubMed and other databases for existing systematic reviews and relevant methodological research. Our conclusions are based on available evidence, consideration of what guideline developers are doing, and workshop discussions. Professional societies often depend on industry funding to support clinical practice guideline development. In addition, members of guideline committees frequently have financial relationships with commercial entities, are invested in their intellectual work, or have conflicts related to clinical revenue streams. No systematic reviews or other rigorous evidence regarding best practices for funding models, disclosure mechanisms, management strategies, or enforcement presently exist, but the panel drew several conclusions that could improve transparency and process.

Reconciliation Financing: An Innovative Approach to Poverty, Inequality, and Social Conflict

This paper focuses on the problem of addressing historical injustices and raising finance for small scale revenue generating projects that benefit those victims of these past injustices who still lack access to jobs, services and opportunities. These projects always experience funding problems. They are considered both rich for grant funding because they generate a stream of revenues but poor for commercial funding because either they are too small or they generate an insufficient income stream to be attractive to commercial funders. In proposing a debt-based solution to these funding problems, the paper proposes 3 principles of reconciliation financing.

Commercial Influences on Programme Content: The German and UK Approaches to Transposing EU Rules on Product Placement

Product placement has now been accepted as a permissible feature of contemporary television programming, as a result of changes introduced by the Audiovisual Media Services Directive 2007. But the process of reform and its implementation has manifested a high degree of uncertainty and concern regarding the advisability of such a transformation and its implications. This article discusses the solutions adopted in two countries, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is suggested that neither country has established a regime which enables viewers to have a clear understanding of the relationship between the producers or broadcasters and commercial funding. The replacement of the principle of separation with the principle of identification has exposed programmes to the vagaries of the marketplace even further without increasing transparency for the viewer. With the prospect of increased presence of product placement in the next few years, as production cycles come to reflect the new provisions, it is a matter of concern that better provision has not been made to protect editorial judgment.

Antiepileptic drug trials: the view from the clinic*

A golden age of antiepileptic drug development has yielded over a dozen useful new compounds, but the nature of clinical trials has made translation to practical use in the clinic difficult. Most clinical trials are designed for regulatory purposes and fail to answer critical clinical questions. These questions include: which drug is best as initial therapy, which drugs work as monotherapy, what are good drug combinations, what is the best starting dose and titration schedule, what is a reasonable target dose, what is the shape of the dose-response curve and does it vary significantly between patients, what is the true incidence of side effects, and what is the long-term efficacy of the drug? Most of these questions could be answered by changing trial designs, but many changes would entail additional time and money. There are encouraging signs that trials with procedures more directly applicable to the clinic are becoming common. These include direct comparative trials, longer trials with emphasis on seizure freedom, and trials with more flexible dosing schedules. In the past, funding of longer and more naturalistic trials has fallen to government agencies, but commercial funding has been obtained for several recent studies. Better quality control, innovative endpoints, structured searching for side effects, and standardisation of data collection are also promising topics for development.

Did the commercial paper funding facility prevent a Great Depression style money market meltdown?

This paper analyzes how risk premiums altered the use of commercial paper relative to bank loans during the recent financial crisis. Consistent with the theoretical and empirical literature on how surges in risk premiums can induce plunges in under-collateralized credit or credit funded with noninsured sources, results indicate that a spike in risk premiums induced a plunge in commercial paper use during the recent crisis. This paper also finds that Federal Reserve interventions in the money market helped prevent the commercial paper market from melting down to the extent seen during the early 1930s.

Uk Carbon Capture and Storage, Where is It?

Carbon capture and storage, to capture CO2 from power plants and big industry, remains much publicised, much talked about as an essential action against climate change, and intensively analysed and costed. However only four governments have had the courage to provide actual or allocated commercial funding to enable the first integrated projects to occur. The UK has experimented with several proposed funding mechanisms, and with several proposed designs for full-scale projects. However perceived expense remains a persistent blockage from the government perspective. And from the company perspective, perceived risk remains the critical disincentive. The UK has abundant storage which is ready to develop. CCS on gas (or maybe coal) fuelled plant is seen as the ideal compliment to variable wind power, and so is critical to the UK's future electricity delivery planning. What many analysts miss is that CO2 storage will also be vital to any negative emissions strategy - either co-firing with biomass, or direct cap...

NICE guidance on CardioQ™ oesophageal Doppler monitoring

In this Editorial, the authors may have conveyed the impression that financial support provided by Deltex Medical to various institutions amounted to commercial funding of the specific studies that gave rise to the NICE Guidance. We have been asked by Deltex Medical to clarify that, in fact, only one study of intra-operative Doppler monitoring supporting its use was (partially) funded by Deltex Medical [Gan et al.], and one other funded study [Senagore et al.] that was considered by NICE did not support its use. Further, the study by McKendry et al., whilst funded by Deltex Medical, was in postoperative patients and so did not inform the NICE Guidance. The authors apologise to the investigators concerned and the manufacturers (Deltex Medical) for any misleading impression the Editorial may have given in this regard. They also wish to reiterate their statement in the Editorial, that no aspersions were being cast on any of the studies, and that the propriety of these studies was not being questioned. Furthermore, any inference that Deltex Medical might in any way have improperly influenced the guidance would be wrong.

Multi-Party Actions and Complex Litigation in England

This article considers (i) complex civil litigation in general and (ii) multi-party litigation. Both are examined from an English perspective. As for (ii) there are dangers in adopting an `opt out’ system: potentially aggressive attempts to bring collective litigation; the prospect of very large gains being made by law firms; the fear of commercial and public entities being exposed to expensive and protracted litigation; inevitable increases in the cost of potential defendants’ defensive measures; in particular, consumers and businesses paying more for insurance cover. The 2009 British Government had no stomach for collective big money litigation, because it rejected a generic opt-out class action for damages. Such a generic opt-out class action for damages would have involved claimants’ rights being championed by the joint enterprise of law firms (including foreign firms fishing in England for work) and commercial funders (or syndicates of funders) interested in profiting from others’ litigation. Instead England operates the Group Litigation Order system, introduced in 2000, which is an `opt-in’ mechanism. There are no limits on that system, which can embrace any type of civil claim. Part of a collection entitled 'Contract Law and Civil Justice Special Issues In Memory of Kurt Lipstein', edited by M Andenas, N Andrews and M Tamaruya. This paper and related papers have been accepted for publication and will appear in one of two special series in European Business Law Review (2011)(papers on contract) and (2012) (papers on procedure and civil justice).

Liquidity Backstop, Corporate Borrowings, and Real Effects

This research investigates the real effects of public liquidity provision. Using the Commercial Paper Funding Facility’s (CPFF) eligibility criteria for non-financial commercial paper issuers as the identification strategy, we show that firms with access to the CPFF were able to mitigate the financing disruptions caused by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the ensuing dysfunctional credit market. CPFF directly reduces risk of eligible firms, which in turn improved their financing and short-term profitability. We find liquidity spillover effects from CPFF-eligible firms to their customers through the increased use of trade credit, which propagates the real effects throughout the economy. JEL classifications: G18; G21; G28; G32; G38

On the Ideal of Autonomous Science

In this article I first use Alasdair MacIntyre's conception of a practice to develop a version of the common, although increasingly controversial, ideal of value-free, value-neutral, or autonomous science. I then briefly show how this ideal has been used by some philosophers to criticize both governmental and commercial funding of science. I go on to argue that, far from being value neutral, certain elements of this ideal strongly resemble some controversial elements of libertarian political philosophy. I suggest that alternative ideals for science might be developed by drawing on egalitarian liberal and communitarian political philosophy.

NICE guidance on CardioQTM oesophageal Doppler monitoring

NICE guidance on CardioQTM oesophageal Doppler monitoring

Commercial Funding in Academe: Examining the Correlates of Faculty's Use of Industrial and Business Funding for Academic Work

Commercial Funding in Academe: Examining the Correlates of Faculty's Use of Industrial and Business Funding for Academic Work

Relaxing Financing Constraint In The Microfinance Industry: Is Commercialization The Answer?

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; text-align: justify; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A critical question facing Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) is whether they can attract commercial capital as a solution to their financing problem and as a way of relaxing strained development aid. While donations have made enormous contributions to microfinance development and poverty reduction among the poor to date, an attempt to scale-up funding from this traditional source has been an uphill task. It is argued that vast resources of commercial capital can become available to microfinance if critical success strategies of access to commercial funding are developed. This paper offers research evidence that identifies significant predictors for successful Commercialization of microfinance based on firm-level data from African MFIs for three financial years between 1998 and 2003. The research develops and tests a commercial rating rule (predictive model) for determining success in tapping commercial capital. The results indicate the emergence of new finance sources, widened financing options for MFIs and the capacity to relax growth constraints in the industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the findings also suggest the need for MFIs to satisfy the interests and requirements of prospective commercial investors to overcome new challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

Outcomes, Outcomes, Every where, nor any Stop to Think?

Outcomes, Outcomes, Every where, nor any Stop to Think?

Does Receiving TARP Funds Make it Easier to Roll Your Commercial Paper Onto the Fed?

The Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) bought commercial paper from highly-rated issuers of U.S. dollar commercial paper during the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009. This is the only study to analyze the characteristics of firms selected for this Federal Reserve program. CPFF participants and non-participants differed little in terms of profitability, solvency, or liquidity ratios. Nevertheless, CPFF participants were significantly more likely to come from the financial sector, to pose greater systemic risks, and to have received funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout. The baseline predicted probability of participation in the CPFF jumps from 37.2 percent to 65.9 percent if the commercial paper issuer participated in the TARP bailout.