The world's third largest drug company, Sanofi-Aventis [3], sponsored a tour to Budapest and Paris for a "parliamentary and stakeholder working group" including representatives from British patient groups [4]. The tour included "optional attendance" at lectures at the European Association of Cancer Research conference in Budapest and a presentation in Paris on cancer drugs used in France but not yet approved in Britain. The head of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation [5], Mike Unger, defended participation in the trip: "If we paid, then it would come out of the charity's fund for research, which would be very wrong." The company's communications director, Cressida Ward [6], described the junket as "a purely educational trip ... I can't see the harm in this."