Big Pharma clinical trials - "endemic untrustworthiness"

Big Pharma cannot be trusted to safely run clinical trials without outside regulation, a UK healthcare expert has claimed.

An article published in today's Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine by Sir Iain Chalmers argues that the untrustworthiness of clinical health trials has reached endemic proportions in the UK.

Sir Iain, editor of treatment monitoring organisation the James Lind Library, also criticises doctors who he claims "collude" with the drugs industry by collaborating with "scientific misbehaviour driven by the marketing departments of pharmaceutical companies".

"Research undertaken by pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted," Sir Iain writes. "Their systematic under-reporting of negative results and lack of transparency is blatant scientific misconduct and unethical. Without radical change this will continue."

Insider's view: sad but true. This adds to the Paul Dieppe "complicity theory" post from the same journal.

Time for a radical change? Insider hopes so, but is realistic about the chances.