Do patients have the most appropriate medicines for the best health outcomes?
Over the last 100 years clinical trials have been undertaken, although most have probably not been published. Mainly humans publish evidence that proves their theory is right, not that their theory is unproven or even incorrect (makes me wonder about the evidence on global warming). Many papers no doubt did not get published because of non outcomes or negative outcomes that don’t help the payers, represented in this debate as the Pharma companies.
This was by necessity a
very dry debate, there is the very serious issue of whether patients have had
the most appropriate medicines for best health outcomes. I think few are in any
doubt that 50 years ago medicines came onto the market with selected data that
would have been unacceptable today. What raises eyebrows is that one major
Pharma company submitted a new medicine to the German market on “selected data”.
The German authorizing body demanded all the data, eventually gained this, and
then reviewed and rejected the product. Another major Pharma company currently
has a financially large product on the market, there is much speculation on the
“overall product benefit” and at this time the Pharma company refuses to release
all data from all the clinical trials.
Pharma companies are
placed in a difficult position, virtually all have “improving health” in their
vision statements; to GSK's credit they have moved their position and are doing
a “timed” rollback of all clinical trial data, starting with current marketed
products. Here lies the difficulty
of a solution; inevitably some evidence will come to light that “best medicine”
was not used, that there will be bodiesindividuals then seeking compensation.
Indeed I asked this question to “Ben Goldacre" and he said words to the effect
- "there probably needs to be some timelines beyond which there is some
protection for the Pharma companies". However I’m not aware of any authority
that would pass a “world” law that would effectively allow such protection, and
as such a Pharma company publishing all the trial data may well be the cause of
it’s own downfall for a drug sold 50 years ago! I for one am not convinced that
digging into the past and potentially financially crippling our current Pharma
companies is going to help the spend on research and development of new
medicines. It seems to me that the release of all clinical trial data on
currently marketed and new medicines is a healthy starting point.
Over the last 100 years clinical trials have been undertaken, although most have probably not been published. Mainly humans publish evidence that proves their theory is right, not that their theory is unproven or even incorrect (makes me wonder about the evidence on global warming). Many papers no doubt did not get published because of non outcomes or negative outcomes that don’t help the payers, represented in this debate as the Pharma companies. Zenopa Ltd