Dear Dr. Costa e Silva,

Thank you for your letter of 21 July. It was kind of you to suggest I visit your office to discuss the issues that concern me. Perhaps this will be possible at some stage, but I'm afraid I have no plans to visit Geneva in the foreseeable future. In any case, as I mentioned before, I think it would be appropriate in this case to treat my letter as a press enquiry.

I had understood that your Division was planning an informal consultation, to include discussion of antidepressants, and I wanted to verify this. Could you please confirm what the position is, also who the participants are? I understood that they include the following experts in the field: Prof. R Cancro (The Nathan Kline Institute, USA); Prof A. A. Dahl (University of Oslo, Norway); Prof M. Lader (Institute of Psychiatry, London); Prof G. Laux (Bezirks-krankenhaus Gabersee, Germany); Prof H-J Moeller (Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik, Munich, Germany); Prof S. Montgomery (Imperial College School of Medicine, London); Prof S. Ruschel (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Prof D. Sheehan (University of South Florida, USA); Prof D.J. Stein, (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa); Prof E. H. Uhlenhuth University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA).

I note your assurance that all projects are carried out strictly in accordance with WHO's rules and regulations, but I do not know what these are and would want to be better informed. In particular, I do not know what rules apply to the funding of meetings, and to disclosure of potential conflicts of interest by experts and advisers. Since I wrote to you, I see that the new Director-General has introduced, for the first time, a requirement for senior WHO personnel to declare personal financial and other interests in the private sector. This underlines the significance of my request, as would the inclusion of Professors M. Lader and S. Montgomery as WHO expert advisers.

Given this welcome new emphasis on disclosure, I would appreciate specific information in response to the questions I raised in my earlier letter. Many thanks and I shall look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Medawar

 

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