AllTrials - the countdown begins

Drug companies have a year to publish their data, or we’ll do it for themAs a doctor it’s my job to prescribe lotions and potions. To do so, I read information about drug trials in books and medical journals to keep me up to speed on the latest drugs, dangers and side effects.But what if what I read is part of an elaborate marketing strategy by a drug company to use me to get to you?This happens all the time. So much so that the saturation of scientific literature with commercial messages has come to the point where some of those of us who work full time in this area don’t trust the literature anymore. I can read something about a drug and find that the majority of the data about it – for example as I arguedin a recent article on Tamiflu – is missing.This is not because the work hasn’t been done, but because it has been deliberately hidden. What has been published might have important discrepancies with what probably really happened during a clinical trial into the drug. We just don’t know.It’s a story that involves everyone: scientists, pharmaceutical sponsors, editors of biomedical journals and the media. Ultimately it is you who suffers.At school, if you made a mistake the teacher would ask you to explain it and get you to correct it in your exercise book. The same should go for unpublished and misreported trials. They should be published and formally corrected to ensure doctors and patients can rely on complete and accurate information about the ...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs