The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced the Alcohol Education and Research Council (AERC) is to be reviewed. According to the DCMS press release,
The review will consider how best to support and develop the role currently played by the AERC and the fund which it manages. The remit of the review will be to help the AERC to ensure that its functions are focused and managed as effectively as possible. It is due to be completed before Christmas.
Tessa Jowell controversially appointed Jean Coussins, chief exec of the Portman Group, to AERC's board. DCMS doesn't mention this, but the Financial Times clearly thinks it's the reason behind the review:
DCMS is expected to remove the Portman Group, the industry body, from the government-sponsored AERC after a row about the influence that drinks producers have over studies on alcohol misuse.
Some of that row was played out in the BMJ and there's more in the latest and previous edition of Addiction, with the great and the good of the alcohol field queueing up to join in.
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