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Exaggerated claims are being made for new cancer treatments that are not justified by the evidence, scientists warned yesterday. Drugs hailed as breakthrough treatments for cancer, Britain's biggest cause of death, may be less effective and cause more harm than suspected, they said.
A sharp increase in the number of trials being halted prematurely to deliver rapid results is undermining confidence in the drugs.
Public demand for access to new treatments, allied to the pharmaceutical companies' eagerness to bank profits, creates pressure on researchers to terminate trials as soon as a drug reveals a benefit. But that can be before the full results are in.
A review of 25 trials of cancer drugs that had been stopped early during the past decade because they had started to show a benefit to patients, found more than half (14) had been halted in the past three years. Of those, 11 were used to support an application for a drug licence in Europe or in the US, researchers discovered.
More at The Independent
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