What's BIO and PhRMA do­ing to ad­dress sex­u­al ha­rass­ment? Sen­a­tor Mur­ray wants to know

Re­mem­ber the ex­trav­a­gant par­ty at BIO’s in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion a few weeks ago that fea­tured top­less dancers? Well, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray does, and she is us­ing the event to call on both BIO and PhRMA — the two biggest in­dus­try trade groups — to step up in their ac­tions against work­place ha­rass­ment.

In two sep­a­rate let­ters sent to the chiefs of each or­ga­ni­za­tion, Mur­ray lam­bast­ed BIO’s lack of ac­tion and PhRMA’s si­lence in wake of their mem­ber com­pa­nies’ spon­sor­ship of PAB­NAB, the in­fa­mous in­for­mal event in a sense born out of — but em­phat­i­cal­ly not af­fil­i­at­ed with — the an­nu­al net­work­ing con­fer­ence of bio­phar­ma folks. Cit­ing wide­spread sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the med­ical re­search com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al, she al­so pressed for the trade groups’ un­der­stand­ing of and plans to ad­dress the prob­lem.

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