March 18, 2022
The opinion published in the British Medical Journal states, “evidence based medicine was a paradigm shift intended to provide a solid scientific foundation for medicine”. The opinion continues by stating evidence based medicine’s validity “depends on reliable data from clinical trials, most of which are conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics”.
The opinion concludes with “proposals for reforms include:
- Liberation of regulators from drug company funding
- Taxation imposed on pharmaceutical companies to allow public funding of independent trials
- Anonymised individual patient level trial data posted, along with study protocols, on suitably accessible websites so that third parties, self-nominated or commissioned by health technology agencies, could rigorously evaluate the methodology and trial results.
- Necessary changes to trial consent forms, participants could require trialists to make the data freely available
- Open and transparent publication of data are in keeping with our moral obligation to trial participants”
Access the complete British Medical Journal Opinion here
