MPs write to Public Accounts Committee to request action on hidden trials and Tamiflu.

December 14th, 2012 by Ben Goldacre in ABPI, alltrials campaign | 8 Comments »

The letter below has been sent to Margaret Hodge, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, asking her to take action on the ongoing problem of hidden trials, and specifically Tamiflu.

The very notion that we spent £500 million on Tamiflu – with information about over half of the clinical trials still being withheld – is nothing short of absurd. For context, £500 million is 5% of the total NHS drugs budget (£10 billion) for one year. This ongoing issue of secrecy around clinical trials wastes money and harms patients, and it has persisted for several reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

False claims by Stephen Whitehead and Deepak Khanna of the ABPI

December 14th, 2012 by Ben Goldacre in ABPI, bad science, Stephen Whitehead | 4 Comments »

Briefly: the ABPI have engaged in an energetic personal smear campaign, as predicted at the end of Bad Pharma. I’ll think about posting the details from leaked and external ABPI documents at some stage. I’m posting some correspondence today because the CEO and President of the ABPI have both falsely claimed to MPs and journalists that I’ve refused to meet them over many years. This is silly and untrue, especially when the ABPI have also specifically stated in public that they are refusing to engage with my concerns. Both Stephen Whitehead (CEO) and Deepak Khanna (President) have failed to provide any explanation of why they’ve made these false claims, or give a full list of the people they’ve misled, so regrettably I’m posting my letter to them here. Read the rest of this entry »