MPs are to investigate need for drug companies to share clinical trial data

MPs are set to investigate drug companies’ sharing of clinical trial data, after mounting pressure on the issue, the chairman of the health select committee has announced. In a discussion panel at the NHS Alliance’s conference in Bournemouth today, the committee’s chairman, Stephen Dorrell, confirmed that MPs would examine the issue as a matter of priority within the next 12 months. The announcement came after the BMJ recently launched its open data campaign, which aims to achieve “appropriate and necessary independent scrutiny of data from clinical trials” and to “highlight the problems caused by lack of access to data.”1 In September this year the doctor and science writer Ben Goldacre published Bad Pharma …