Report ALL Drug Study Results, Not Just the Favorable Ones

Also from The Times:

Pharmaceutical companies would no longer be able to hide the results of clinical trials that reflect badly on their products under a long overdue reform that gained momentum last week. The nation's largest doctors' group, some prominent medical editors and a leading drug company all threw their weight behind proposals to create a public database that would include the results of all drug trials — not just the ones the manufacturers wanted to brag about.

Their voices are a welcome addition to the legal pressure brought by Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney general, who has filed fraud charges against GlaxoSmithKline for concealing negative information about some of the trials it conducted on a drug used to fight depression.

In last week's action, the American Medical Association urged the federal government to set up a public registry of trial results. That is an obvious beginning, but even more needs to be done to make sure the pharmaceutical companies cooperate. The editors of some of the world's most prestigious medical journals are considering one way to prod cooperation — requiring drug companies to register their trials as a prerequisite to publication. In reaction to these moves, Merck said it would support a government-run database, while GlaxoSmithKline said it would publish trial results on its own Web site.

Reporting all trial results should be made mandatory by law. That would ensure that researchers, doctors and their patients can understand how well drugs actually work, as opposed to how well drug commercials imply that they work.