Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15496

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Roehr B
Drug industry protests over need to register trial results.
BMJ 2009 Apr 22; 338:b1652:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/338/apr22_1/b1652

Abstract:

Drug manufacturers this week expressed their concern about a new requirement of the world’s leading drug trial registry that the outcomes of all clinical trials have to be posted on the register within 12 months of completion of the trial.

Under a US law passed in 2007 ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov), which opened in February 2000, has expanded to include not just the details of trials being set up but also the outcomes of completed trials. The requirement came into effect last September.

Deborah Zarin, who heads the service at the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said that more than 71 000 trials had been registered on the site and that about 300 to 350 new trials were coming in each week. Stakeholders aired their concerns about the registry at a meeting this week on the NIH campus outside Washington, DC.

Katie McCarthy, speaking . . .