The pharmaceutical industry is stifling the innovation and development of new treatments for HIV, and those who should be representing the interests of people with HIV are too dependent on pharmaceutical funding to be effective watchdogs, according to an article in Frontiers IN LA magazine.

“While The New York Times and New England Journal of Medicine were investigating and exposing flagrant conflicts of interest and abuse of power in psychiatry, diabetes and hypertension medical specialties, those same rampant conflicts of interest and abuse of public trust have never been explored in HIV/AIDS,” said Mike Barr, from the AIDS Transparency & Accountability Project, who is quoted exclusively throughout the article.

Barr speculates that lack of public attention to possible conflicts of interest might allow industry to stifle research into newer and more innovative treatments for HIV and to continue focusing instead on profits from existing HIV drugs. He says that marketing research reports developed for the pharmaceutical industry are sprinkled with references to “guarding against sales erosion.”

Though Barr doesn’t think that HIV doctors and activists are “villains,” in this scenario, he says, they are often forced by necessity to become dependent on pharmaceutical funding. This, he says, could lead them to become ineffective advocates for better treatments. He worries that the average person living with HIV might assume that those advocating on their behalf are free of pharmaceutical influence when that might not be the case. Barr, however, says that he has personally seen an improvement in the past year in terms of more openness in discussing this issue and possible solutions