The Drug Industry's Long and Ignoble History of Secrecy

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The Drug Industry's Long and Ignoble History of Secrecy

By nce

The Independent UK

Wednesday 27 February 2008

Discovering, testing and bringing a new drug to market can take more than a

decade and cost as much as £500m. Over the past 30 years, as the costs have

mounted, so have the pressures to protect new chemical agents which could become

potential blockbusters.

Secrecy became the pharmaceutical industry's watchword as it sought to control

publication of trials and even manipulate results. Cancer drugs introduced in

the 1990s claimed to offer major benefits which later turned out to be more

apparent than real. Evidence published in The Journal of the American Medical

Association showed that 38 per cent of independent studies of the drugs reached

unfavourable conclusions about them, compared with just 5 per cent of studies

funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2004, UK researchers commissioned by Nice to develop guidelines for

prescribing antidepressant drugs to children tried to obtain unpublished trials

from the drug companies. They were refused. They then contacted the individual

researchers who had worked on the trials. Only then did a picture emerge of

increased risk of attempted suicide, and a lack of efficacy. Nice concluded by

banning the drugs for under-18s with the exception of Prozac.

Yesterday's report suggesting that modern antidepressants offer no significant

clinical benefit over placebo has been dismissed by the drug industry as " just

one study " which should not be allowed to undermine the wealth of research

showing that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants

are effective.

But that is to miss the point. The Hull University researchers have demonstrated

how partial access to research can give a distorted view of a drug. The

non-disclosure of data on the SSRIs has raised doubts about the trustworthiness

of all research on antidepressants.

We should be relieved that the licensing authorities have an absolute right to

see all trial data, positive and negative, before approving a drug. But,

bizarrely, Nice, with the responsibility for deciding which drugs should be used

by the NHS, only gets what the drug companies agree to give it. The Health

Select Committee has called for action to remedy this omission. Ministers must

respond.