MotherToBaby

Teratology service

Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (OTIS), a US nonprofit · United States

Visit the source site · Audited 2026-10-14

Who pays for it

OTIS reports 16 sponsored pregnancy registries and, in FY2024, $2,346,081 in revenue, including $2,128,619 in contributions whose sources are not broken out.

Status: Supporting

OTIS has specialist writers and publishes pregnancy research, but it also receives government and private funding and runs drug-company-sponsored registries. SafeMomma lists it as supporting, so claims need agreement from a source with different owners and funding.

How SafeMomma uses it

We use its summaries as one view and trace important claims to the cited study and a separately funded source; when other databases cite the same OTIS study, we count the paper once.

The audit

Who controls it: MotherToBaby is OTIS's public service, and OTIS is governed by an elected board of specialists. OTIS and UC San Diego coordinate its pregnancy studies; reviewed pages describe a website committee and independent study advisory boards, and identified no political appointees or industry representatives in the content chain.
Money: OTIS lists member dues, private and company donations, government grants, affiliate funding, and sponsored registries. Its page lists 16 sponsored registries that may be complete or ongoing, but gives no sponsor-by-sponsor contract amounts; FY2024 contributions were $2,128,619, with donor types not identified. OTIS's About page reports a $6 million, five-year HRSA grant with 28% nongovernmental financing, while a fact-sheet footer describes a $1.2 million award with zero nongovernmental financing; the audit could not reconcile these figures.
Conflict rules: The audit found no public organization-wide conflict policy or author-by-author disclosures on fact sheets; this does not show that OTIS lacks an internal policy. Peer-reviewed study papers disclose study funding and author conflicts.
Method: Fact sheets cite published research and discuss individual studies and limits. The audit found no public evidence-grading scale or repeatable fact-sheet search method.
Dates on its pages: Fact sheets show dates, but the reviewed pages provide no change log or usual update schedule.
Political exposure: Under its 2022–2027 HRSA agreement, HRSA may review project activity and materials before release. In September 2025, US officials linked acetaminophen to autism and FDA announced a warning-label action; MotherToBaby's sheet shows an October 1, 2025 date, but no earlier version established a response, and no political order changing OTIS content was found.
Money exposure: OTIS says it runs 16 sponsored registries, with named sponsors including AbbVie, Pfizer/BioNTech, and GSK; sponsor contract amounts are not public. Contributions were 90.7% of OTIS's FY2024 revenue, but the filing does not identify donor types. The audit found no evidence that a sponsor dictated a result.
Track record: Backtests found codeine advice appeared about 3 years 8 months after FDA's April 2017 action and the ondansetron sheet date lagged EMA's July 2019 recommendation by about 3 years 2 months; exact edit dates remain unknown. The valproate test found differing neural-tube-defect estimates, including MotherToBaby's 1–2% versus FDA's up-to-1-in-20 statement; the topiramate and ondansetron summaries acknowledge disagreement but omit important study-specific details. The acetaminophen sheet displays October 1, 2025, while September 21 and October 15, 2025 archive copies showed its 2023 edition; current wording was captured June 3, 2026, so rollout timing is unknown.

Where this comes from

Incentive exposure describes pressure from money or politics, not whether the source is right. Funding alone does not show influence.

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