Reporting adverse drug reactions.

and are available from booksellers through the network of WHO sales agents. A list of these agents may be obtained by writing to the above address. (CIOMS) is a nongovernmental organization established jointly by the World Health Organization and UNESCO in 1949, with a mandate to collaborate with the United Nations and its specialized agencies. Its international membership, consisting of international unions and federations of national associations and societies, represents a substantial proportion of the world's biomedical scientific community. Its secretariat is located in Geneva in offices made available by the World Health Organization. A dominant theme of CIOMS for some time has been the ethical aspects of biomedical technology and the bioethical considerations to be taken into account in determining and implementing health policy. A particular aspect of biomedical technology, the development and use of drugs, has been a second major theme. The independent status of CIOMS has permitted it to coordinate the contributions of research-based pharmaceutical companies, national drug regulatory authorities, and representative bodies of medical specialties to harmonizing and strengthening drug-safety surveillance measures. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) gratefully acknowledges the contribution of over 160 individuals to the work that has resulted in this publication, by their participation in working groups, providing consultant advice or preparing background papers, as representatives of pharmaceutical companies, drug regulatory authorities or international medical societies, or as medical experts from universities, clinics, and hospitals in 15 countries (Appendix II). CIOMS acknowledges especially the contribution of the core group of pharmaceutical companies at whose request the project was undertaken and which largely funded it. These were, from Germany, seven members of