Drug companies hide trial results, putting patients and doctors in the dark

How this “standard” is costing you — big time

If you flip a coin, but hide it every time it comes up tails, it looks like the result is always heads.

That’s how Dr. Ben Goldacre put it in a recent New York Times article…

And Big Pharma had uncovered an ingenious way of hiding all the tails.

Until now…

Who will let the dogs out?

Everyone who takes a prescription drug is stepping into the unknown. And I mean EVERYone. Including your doctor.

Your doctor might think he has a clue about the drugs he’s prescribing. But he’s still only seeing those “heads.”

That’s because almost nobody outside of the inner circle of drug company employees gets a complete look at drug company trials.

And that’s because drug companies get to decide what to do with most of their research.

Goldacre, a crusader for drug trial transparency, notes that only about half of all trials are reported. And you can be certain there’s no good news in those unreported trials.

Two attempts to fix this problem have been complete failures.

A few years ago, the FDA started a trial transparency program. But the agency never enforced it. (Shocking…right?)

The program turned into a joke. Literally. I’m sure drug company honchos get a laugh every time they think of it.

Medical journal editors also gave transparency a try back in 2005. Under that program, no trial would be published unless it was entered in a publicly accessible registry before the trial began.

That plan was just about as successful as the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

Ironically, these two plans BENEFIT drug companies. That’s because the industry pretends the plans are successful. They promote the fantasy that alert watchdogs are in place. In fact, those dogs are sound asleep in a dog house out back somewhere while Big Pharma tiptoes around and puts poison in our medicine cabinets.

Sources:
“Health Care’s Trick Coin” Ben Goldacre, The New York Times, 2/1/13, nytimes.com