Should NCCN panelists be allowed to receive any money or funding from pharmaceutical or/and medical device companies while serving on the panels?

Doctors who sit on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline panels are allowed to receive up to $20,000 per year from a single pharmaceutical or medical device company or $50,000 in the aggregate per year. Specifically, the NCCN website states the following: “If an NCCN Guidelines Panel Member or prospective Member or an NCCN Guidelines Steering Committee Member or prospective Member has an equal to or greater than $20,000 conflicting interest from at least one single external entity, including the sum of income and equity holdings from said entity, or if their aggregate conflicting interest from all external entities is equal to or greater than $50,000 per year, the Member or proposed appointee will be deemed ineligible for continued service or for appointment.”

Some experts claim that these thresholds are way too high, and that NCCN guideline panelists should only be doctors who don’t receive any money or funding from pharma whatsoever. But Dr Robert Carlson, the CEO of NCCN, defends the organization’s current stance saying that tightening the rules would lead to exclusion of best experts in oncology and ultimately affect the quality of the guidelines.

Write a research paper that examines this question: Should NCCN panelists be allowed to receive any money or funding from pharmaceutical or/and medical device companies while serving on the panels? Support your stance on the issue with solid evidence from reputable sources and use APA citation style, 7th edition, for the assignment. Make sure that your paper includes a title page, abstract, main body, and references, and is formatted in accordance with APA. Finally, please include an “Opposition” section in your paper where you will acknowledge and explain the views of people who would disagree with you. (There is a sample essay included in both PDFs of the “Read and Watch” section that shows you how this can be done.)

Required word count: 1,500 words excluding references

Please upload your assignment in a Microsoft Word document