Pharma Mass Market Manipulation - call for patients to understand the implications of clinical trial involvement
A number of reports and papers are emerging that raise serious concerns over the trustworthiness of 'ethical' pharmaceutical company test data. Due to increasing suspicion over product claims made by pharmaceutical companies, European drug regulators have called for pharmaceutical companies to make clinical trial data publicly available.
The worry is that pharmaceutical companies will guard outcome data out of fear of what it might reveal. The pretext given for keeping this data out of the public domain is that the information is 'commercially sensitive' and therefore confidential to the company. However, regulators reasonably point out that when patients agree to join clinical trials they do so on the basis and understanding that they are contributing to medical and scientific knowledge.
Several respected journals are saying that the non-disclosure of this outcome data not only undermines philanthropy, but also allows companies to report data with a distinctly unhealthy marketing 'spin'. In fact, the real question is how they have been able to get away with it for so long.
So if even regulators cannot regulate the industry the only hope lies in the growing power of those who most contribute to the success of clinical research and who also stand to benefit the most from any of drug development i.e. patients.
Genuine scientists are calling for patients to only sign consent documents that allow the data obtained from experiments to be made available to the medical community - and not just the pharmaceutical company. Raw data should be openly available with all the necessary protections for commercial confidentiality and the personal privacy that it entails. The trouble is that looking at the mammoth sums involved in a successful drug marketing campaign it is difficult to persuade drug companies that an ethical approach is also ultimately in their interest. The industry needs to work on its own reputation.
Source: Nature