Essential Medicines News

Medical journals have been pressuring pharmaceutical companies to make their clinical studies available to the public for general review, to reduce the bias in publishing only the studies that support the use of a drug. In 2006, only 8% of the trials submitted to clinicaltrials.gov failed to describe experimental outcomes, down from about 26% of studies in prior years.

[The registry] began operating in 2000 but saw little industry participation until late 2004. That was when the 11 members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors said they would publish only studies registered early on, in part to keep drug companies from suppressing the results of experiments that did not turn out the way they wanted.

New England Journal of Medicine editor in chief Dr. Jeffrey Drazen and Dr. Deborah A. Zarin of the National Library of Medicine, which operates the registry, reported on its progress in an editorial in Thursday’s issue of the journal.