The crowd of nearly 2,500 was on fire, the speakers were excellent and you can still watch it (and help cover some of the costs) by buying tickets to watch it online. Four hours of some of the best and brightest of humanity.

act-of-the-day (for me) was that the Australian TGA (drug approval agency) gets 96% of its budget from the industry it supposedly is a watchdog for. Hello? So when the TGA inexplicably banned the safe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine options they were, it seems, just doing what any bought-and-paid corporate crony agency would, even if people died. Apparently the government agencies are not just a rubber stamp for profitable drugs, they are the iron mallet to crush the competition too.

While Australia won the prize for the agency with the Biggest Conflict of Interest, there's little material difference in the EU, the US or the UK (or Canada). The drug industry funds 89% of the EMA budget in Europe and 86% of the UK-MHRA's. The giant US FDA is "only" 65% industry funded. Glory be — is $800 million enough of a conflict of interest?

From the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Australian investigator — Maryanne Demasi:

Are drug regulators sufficiently independent from the companies they regulate?

Over the past decades, regulatory agencies have seen large proportions of their budgets funded by the industry they are sworn to regulate, explains investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi.

Industry fees to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have increased 30 fold – from around $29m in 1993 to $884m in 2016, while in Europe, industry fees now fund 89% of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), up from 20% in 1995.