TERIS

The audit

Who controls it

On September 4, 2025, application, subscription, and account management moved from the University of Washington and CoMotion to PEAR-Net Society; the transfer of legal title or intellectual property was not specified. TERIS has a scientific advisory board, and its current preamble names Sura Alwan and Kimberly S. Grant as summary authors; Alwan also appears on OTIS's 2025 board and leads PEAR-Net, a disclosed role overlap rather than proof of influence.

Money

PEAR-Net describes itself as a nonprofit and says subscriptions help sustain TERIS and Shepard's Catalog. Current subscription prices, financial statements, a funding breakdown, and TERIS-specific dollar amounts were not found. An undated professional-society primer describes historical user subscriptions and royalties, but does not establish current revenue sources.

Conflict rules

The audit found no public TERIS or PEAR-Net conflict policy or per-entry author disclosures. Alwan's roles with PEAR-Net and TERIS are disclosed publicly, but that overlap alone does not establish financial conflict or changed content.

Method

TERIS says authors search PubMed, Google Scholar, and Europe PMC, then reach consensus ratings with its advisory board. Entries give selected references, seven risk categories, and evidence-quality ratings from None to Excellent; TERIS excludes unpublished company regulatory submissions and does not cover breast-milk pharmacology.

Dates on its pages

The reviewed TERIS pages show no per-agent revision dates or change history; references from 2024 and 2025 do not establish when an individual rating changed.

Political exposure

PEAR-Net's mission includes advocacy, and in September 2025 Alwan publicly disputed claims linking acetaminophen to autism in an article disclosing her PEAR-Net and TERIS roles. The audit found no evidence that political pressure changed, removed, or rewrote a TERIS entry; public commentary is not evidence of database interference.

Money exposure

At the October 14, 2026 review, TERIS had paid subscriptions, but public pages showed no current prices, funders, company sponsor list, or evidence that subscribers direct ratings. A historical royalty model appeared only in an undated secondary primer, so current financial exposure remains unverified.

Track record

A 2011 review coauthored by TERIS founder Jan M. Friedman and TERIS-associated Janine Polifka found risk undetermined for 168 of 172 newer FDA-approved drugs; 23 of 468 older drugs had a full risk-category change over the prior decade. The authors estimated an average of 27 years before an initially undetermined drug received a more precise rating; this documents sparse pregnancy evidence and slow data growth, not an independent accuracy test of TERIS.

Where this comes from

• TERIS transition notice
• PEAR-Net about
• PEAR-Net TERIS resources
• TERIS methods and preamble
• 2011 TERIS risk-rating review