MPs pharma investigation in offing
pharmafile | November 26, 2012 | News story | Sales and Marketing | ABPI, Bad pharma, M&P, MP, NICE, trial data
A health select committee inquiry into pharma companies withholding clinical trial data is being considered, according to committee chair Stephen Dorrell.
The former health secretary admitted during a debate at last week’s NHS Alliance conference: “It’s pretty close to the top of the list of subjects.”
Tomorrow the select committee – whose recent investigations have taken in social care, the General Medical Council and Care Quality Commission – will take its first evidence for an inquiry into NICE.
But pressure has been growing on MPs to look at the way the pharma industry behaves as well. While Dorrell remained tightlipped about when the spotlight could be turned on pharma – and indeed nothing is confirmed – this debate appears to be snowballing.
In the same conference session, Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston said she had been urging the committee to put pharma under the microscope.
Wollaston was quoted by GP as saying: “I think we need a root and branch review of the way the pharmaceutical industry operates.” Her concerns over transparency dovetail with questions on how the government purchases medicines from pharma companies.
“For far too long now we have allowed the government to buy drugs at vast expense…without actually knowing all of the clinical trial data and I think that’s totally unacceptable,” she went on.
She wants the NHS to be more ‘muscular’ on the issue, GP reported. “We have many levers that we can exert to insist to see all the data, and not just that but insisting that we see proper professional accountability around it,” Wollaston added.
“Patient safety is put at risk by inappropriate prescribing which is a risk when doctors do not know the full clinical data,” she concluded. Exactly this point is made at some length by doctor and medical writer Ben Goldacre in his latest book Bad Pharma.
Earlier this month European pharma body EFPIA said it was against what it called the ‘indiscriminate’ release of data but other parties are making slightly different noises.
Roche said last week that it will let researchers have access to more data on its influenza vaccine Tamiflu after being criticised by the British Medical Journal and the Cochrane Collaboration.
And the European Medicines Agency has said it will ‘proactively’ publish trial data on a range of medicines and enable access to full data sets by those who request it.
Adam Hill
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