Why the data on all drug trials must be released | Síle Lane | Comment is free | theguardian.com

"Patients and researchers are finally beginning to realise that we don't know what was found in around half of all clinical trials, and we don't even know about all the trials that have been done. Serious proposals to put this right are now coming into view – global registries such as the EU Clinical Trials Register and clinicaltrials.gov, the world's largest, are talking about how to add missing data; some companies are working together to become fully transparent and today the Commons science and technology committee did their part with a report from an inquiry into clinical trials. It contains some good things, especially on getting data from past clinical trials out from behind closed doors. These past results are, of course, the data on which decisions about treatments we use every day are based. Most of the medicines doctors currently prescribe were tested in clinical trials a decade or more ago. Ben Goldacre, the author of Bad Pharma and one of the founders of the AllTrials campaign, points out that 'over the next two years, many of the drugs in common use will come to the end of their patent life. When that happens, it may become even harder to get the information that has been withheld.' Doctors, pharmacists, regulators and researchers won't have all the available information, leading to bad treatment decisions, missed opportunities for good medicine, and trials being needlessly repeated. That's why the committee's call for the government to audit all publicly funded clinical trials since 2000 to identify gaps in registration and reporting is so important. It recommends imposing sanctions on researchers who fail to fill in gaps within a year and asks government to make sure researchers are given the resources they need to comply. In February 2013 the pharmaceutical company GSK committed itself to sharing results from clinical trials since 2000 ..."