Mind Hacks has a good piece on the current negotiations over how much transparency there will be to the development of the forthcoming (May, 2012) 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) of the American Psychiatric Association. At stake is whether anyone apart from the DSM writing committee itself will know how much pressure is being brought to bear on the authors by pharmaceutical companies, which have a vested interest in diagnosable conditions being included in the Manual for which they claim to have specific treatments (i.e., billions of dollars are at stake). One of the major criticisms of the last edition of the DSM was that several of the authors had deep entanglements with major pharmaceutical companies, leading to questions about possible conflicts of interest.

Here is the official DSM-V website.