Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5457
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Publication type: news
Pharmaceutical Industry Cannot Be Trusted To Deal With Biased Reporting Of Clinical Trials Without Clinical Trials Without Stricter Regulation, Royal Society Of Medicine
Medical News Today 2006 Jun 30
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=46284
Full text:
Stricter Regulation,Pharmaceutical Industry Cannot Be Trusted To Deal With Biased Reporting Of Clinical Trials Without Stricter Regulation, Royal Society Of Medicine
Main Category: Pharma Industry News
Article Date: 30 Jun 2006 – 0:00am (PDT)
An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine examines the conduct of pharmaceutical companies in drug trials and urges changes to ensure their research is scientifically trustworthy.
Sir Iain Chalmers said stricter regulation is needed to curb biased under-reporting of clinical trials conducted by pharmaceutical companies.
“Research undertaken by pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted. Their systematic under-reporting of negative results and lack of transparency is blatant scientific misconduct and unethical. Without radical change this will continue,” said Sir Iain.
“It is particularly disappointing that many doctors collude with the industry in this form of scientific misconduct. They have too often simply acquiesced in scientific misbehaviour driven by the marketing departments of pharmaceutical companies.”
The paper examines how policies of greater transparency, led by Glaxo Wellcome in the 1990s and adopted by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, were reversed following Glaxo Wellcome’s merger with SmithKlineBeecham.
“Guidelines for good publication practice, which were written by employees at Glaxo Wellcome, were dropped by GlaxoSmithKline and the employees who drafted them were dismissed,” said Sir Iain.
Sir Iain recently requested that a draft of his paper be presented for comment and criticism to a meeting of staff from the medical departments of member companies of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
“No participant from the pharmaceutical industry challenged the contents of the paper. Rather they asked for suggestions about what could be done to improve the currently poor public image of the industry,” said Sir Iain.
“The first and most obvious step would be for all companies to publicly endorse the Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Companies. However, given industry’s reluctance to take voluntary steps to ensure the scientific integrity of their research, stricter government regulation is likely to be needed,” he said.
Sir Iain’s paper is published days after a study by Consumers International called for an end to the unscrupulous marketing practices by pharmaceutical companies, which spend US$60 billion annually on drug promotion.
From optimism to disillusion about commitment to transparency in the medico-industrial complex (PDF 77k)
Sir Iain Chalmers is editor of ‘The James Lind Library’ and co-author of ‘Testing Treatments: better research for better healthcare’ (British Library 2006).
Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Companies.
‘From optimism to disillusion about commitment to transparency in the medico-industrial complex’ by I Chalmers is published in the July 2006 issue (Vol. 99) of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
JRSM is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. It has been published continuously since 1809. Its Editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi.
The article is available free at http://www.jrsm.org.
