WHO calls on all clinical trials results to be reported – This affects us all

Dear AllTrials supporters
For the first time ever, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has taken a position on clinical trial results reporting, and it’s a very strong position! The WHO now says that researchers have a clear ethical duty to publicly report the results of all clinical trials. Significantly, the WHO has stressed the need to make results from previously hidden trials available. Ben Goldacre said, “This is a very positive, clear statement from WHO, and it is very welcome.” Ilaria Passarani from the European Consumer Organisation BEUC called it “a landmark move for consumers.” It is the position we and hundreds of you wrote to the WHO last autumn urging them to adopt. Well done everyone!
You can read more about the WHO’s statement and responses to it on the AllTrials website, in Science and The Verge and from Reuters.
The WHO has called on organisations and governments to now ensure that all trials get reported. Ben Goldacre has set out some practical suggestions on how to make this happen.
Please help share this exciting news. Can you write about it for a newspaper, journal, newsletter or blog? Make sure to share it on Twitter and Facebook. Here’s a tweet you can use: Great news: The @WHO has said that researchers should publicly report results from all clinical trials. http://bit.ly/1CUd1v6 #AllTrials
Best wishes
Ian
—
Ian Bushfield
Campaigns Support Officer
Sense About Science

Advertisement

Bad Pharma and Alltrials.net

I finally finished reading Dr Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Pharma and what a tale it tells. The premiss of the work is that the doctor who treats you, no matter how rich or poor you are doesn’t know all the data regarding the drugs that he or she is prescribing you. That’s scary, or at least I find it scary. I think I would like to know if drug A has a higher probability of harming or killing me than drug B. Although there is a supporting cast in what has happened to medicine over the recent decades the main culprits are the large pharmaceutical companies and the selective publishing of data in regards to drug trials. Ben and others have set up Alltrials.net , http://www.alltrials.net a campaign to bring all that missing data into the public domain. This is sensible for all of us. So please read and if you feel motivated then sign the petition.

Bad Pharma – Ben Goldacre finished reading chapter 3

I’m now half way through the excellent Bad Pharma written by Ben Goldacre. A look at the dastardly corporations, institutions, regulators and people that leave doctors as much as patients in the dark about how good certain drugs are. Everyone remembers the terrible effects of thalidomide but does anybody remember about or know the name of the heart drug that instead of helping people probably killed 100,000. This book should be compulsive reading for GPs and anybody who ever has to take any medicine. Ben writes about how medicine and science should work and shows how it doesn’t. Buy it, be horrified and then ask questions. Pharmaceutical

Ben Goldacre – Bad Pharma just finished chapter 2

I’m still working my way through Ben Goldacre’s excellent book on the pharmaceutical industry, “Bad Pharma” and apart from being so well researched and written it has some interesting comments. Ben relates the story of how in Thailand there are two million women and 800,000 children involved in the sex trade and how the Thai government decided in 2007 to copy a western company’s drug, Abbott’s, drug for the poor. Abbott’s retaliated by withdrawing 7 drugs in total from the Thai market. His point was that the sex industry serves many western men but his knock out comment for me was, “some of whom you may know personally”. Look around you and maybe you will see some of them.