Drug Data Shouldn’t Be Secret - NYT - Doshi & Jefferson

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/opinion/drug-data-shouldnt-be-secret.html

Drug Data Shouldn’t Be Secret

By PETER DOSHI and TOM JEFFERSON

IN the fall of 2009, at the height of fears over swine flu, our research

group discovered that a majority of clinical trial data for the

anti-influenza drug Tamiflu — data that proved, according to its

manufacturer, that the drug reduced the risk of hospitalization, serious

complications and transmission — were missing, unpublished and

inaccessible to the research community. From what we could tell from the

limited clinical data that had been published in medical journals, the

country’s most widely used and heavily stockpiled influenza drug

appeared no more effective than aspirin.

After we published this finding in the British Medical Journal at the

end of that year...