13 Mar 2013 Posted by Daniel Cressey

(London).
… Parliament’s science and technology select committee is investigating whether pharmaceutical companies withhold data that might paint their drugs in a bad light, a subject that is attracting increasing attention in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

“We are eroding belief in medicines because people can’t trust the results that are published,” said Keith Bragman, president of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine.

Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal: ..”it’s a problem across the research enterprise.” Godlee is calling for legislation to mandate the publication of trial results and audits to ensure researchers and their funders comply… Godlee told the committee: “We absolutely have to see this as an international problem, and the solutions have to be international.”

… the charity Cancer Research UK said that isolated action by one country simply shifts the research to another country.. any solution must be global.

Mike Rawlins, speaking for the Academy of Medical Sciences, said that the academy was planning to have discussions with the US Institute of Medicine about access to clinical-trial data...

“These are trans-national issues,” he says. “It’s no good one country trying to do its own thing without involving others.”

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/03...o-global.html/

Note from Bob:
Parkinson's U.K. was one of the first to sign the Alltrials petition; it would be fitting for American Parkinson's organizations to show British PwP some international support in this battle they have taken on, at the least, American PwP should sign the petition; better still, put it on their websites; better still, actively seek to have many of their members sign.

It would help improve the "optics" as well, as right now it does not feel comfortable watching AbbVie launching lawsuits in Europe for the direct purpose of fighting against the contents of the petition promoted by PwP in Britain; while in the U.S.A. AbbVie wears a different mask, as the Premier Sponsor and Proud Partner of the Parkinson's Unity Walk, raising money that is divided among the major Parkinson's charities, none of whom, it seems, have signed the petition.

AbbVie must be chortling. PwP orgs should react by signing the petition, campaigning for the million signatures; would straighten out the picture a bit
Pharma is multinational, but with the internet, so are we. They use their multinational position to divide and conquer; PwP can use the internet to keep them in line on world-wide issues such as this.
PwP orgs of USA and Canada, what say you? Fight, flee or freeze?