The pharmaceutical company-healthcare relationship: much ado about something

The relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare profession, especially doctors, has always been fraught with conflicts of interest (COI). The publication of the influential The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fifth edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), by the American Psychiatric Society (APA) raised concerns that the financial relationships between pharma and members responsible for DSM could result in bias. This resulted in calls for stricter enforcement of controls on financial conflict of interest (FCOI) [1, 2], which could influence the formulation of diagnostic criteria (resulting in more people being "diagnosable as mentally ill"), creating a larger pool of "patients" who "need" pharmaceutical drugs. Knowingly or unknowingly, they would end up serving the pharmaceutical companies' agenda to sell more drugs and drive up profits [2] .