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REPLY

Chair, CAS Research Committee Member, CARF Board of Directors, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, E-mail: rj.hudson{at}ualberta.ca

As Chair of the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS) Research Committee, I welcome the opportunity to address the issues raised by Dr. Vandewater regarding industry partners as sponsors of the CAS Research Grants, Career Scientist, and Fellowship Program.

"partner: a country, organization, etc. that has an agreement with another or others".¹ The CAS has formal agreements with the corporate sponsors that support the CAS Research Program. As well, all recipients of the awards comprising this program enter into agreements with the CAS pertaining to each award. To answer Dr. Vandewater’s question – the CAS is indeed in partnership with corporate sponsors of the CAS Research Grants Program, and, in turn, the recipients of these awards, become partners with the CAS. However, according to the above definition, award recipients and their Departments are not in partnership with the corporate sponsors of the CAS Research Program.

I believe the veracity of this conclusion is reinforced by the manner in which the CAS manages its Research Program. The Canadian Anesthesia Research Foundation (CARF) accepts donations from corporate sponsors, as well as individual donors. Each year, the CARF Board of Directors informs the CAS of the amount of funding available for each of the awards. However, neither the donors (corporate or other) nor the Board of the CARF are involved in the selection of award recipients. The CAS Research Committee is responsible for assessing the applications, using a peer-review process similar to other non-profit granting agencies. Applications are reviewed by anesthesiologists with research expertise from across Canada. The applications and these reviews are subsequently carefully considered by the Research Committee, which then makes final recommendations to the CAS Board of Directors regarding the recipients of each of the awards. Donors to CARF do not have any input into the conduct of research by award recipients, nor do they have any influence on the publication of scientific papers by those recipients. The policies ensure that recipients of CAS Research Awards and their research activities remain independent of the donors and sponsors of this program.

The CAS Research Program is the largest provider of funds for Canadian anesthesia research. Without the good corporate citizenship of its industry sponsors, and the institutional matching funds required for the Career Scientist Awards, the CAS Research Program could not help to ensure stable and ongoing support of anesthesia research in Canada. For 2004, corporate donations to CARF amounted to $350,000, while individual donations (largely from CAS members) totaled less than $50,000 (personal communication, Dr. R. Byrick). No one should appreciate the value of anesthesiology research more than anesthesiologists. Here is my challenge: if each of us donated the equivalent of one hour of our clinical earnings, we could increase research funding by about 100%. For information about donating to the CARF, visit www.anesthesia.org/carf. My cheque is in the mail. How about yours?

Reference

1 Barber K. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Toronto: Oxford University Press; 1998.

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