At 18:30 Geneva time on 25 May 2011, during the 129th session of the WHO Executive Board, the EB is considering the following draft decision on WHO reform.

Chair's text, based on draft proposed by Ecuador

The 29th [sic] Executive Board,

(OP.1) DECIDES to establish an incremental, transparent, Member-State driven and inclusive consultative process comprising of the following elements:

NGO Statement on WHO governance and the Management of Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Financing for WHO.

May 18, 2011

We write to express our concerns about governance of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other public health bodies, as regards the management of conflicts of interest.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has been given a high profile role in intellectual property policies in the Obama Administration. The Department is headed by Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. Locke is the best known as the former two term governor of the State of Washington. After leaving the government, he has also been a lawyer and consultant, including to Microsoft. Here are a few data points on that relationship.

According to data from OpenSecrets.Org, from 1992 to 2006, Pfizer gave 74 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans. Since then, particularly after Hank McKinnell left as CEO, Pfizer is giving slightly more to democrats than to republicans. In the current cycle, 54 percent of contributions go to democrats.