“Millions of volunteers have participated in clinical trials to help find out more about the effects of treatments on disease, yet that important ethical principle about reporting has been widely ignored. Information on what was done and what was found in these trials could be lost forever to doctors and researchers, leading to bad treatment decisions, missed opportunities for good medicine, and trials being repeated.
Trials with negative results are twice as likely to remain unreported as those with positive results. This means that people who make decisions about medicines don’t have full information about the benefits and risks of treatments we use every day.
All trials should be registered and all trial results need to be reported. Transparency is the key to solving many of the health issues plaguing us today. There is so much that we can learn from both successful and unsuccessful trials and we owe it to the volunteer patients who have participated in these trials to be counted. Some people have literally given their lives so that others can benefit from the knowledge obtained from clinical trial data. No drug company or university lab has the right to dictate what data gets published. Standards need to be established, monitored, and enforced worldwide.
Critters For The Cure supports the brilliant scientific and medical minds that have created potential life-saving drugs and test kits, and the volunteer patients who risk their lives for “the cure” or “improved or extended life.” From some of our greatest failures comes our greatest discovery. Let neither ego nor greed get in the way knowledge.”