fair access to shaky science

there's a new pill - progenitorivox - and it's designed to cure anything and everything. that is, if you can take the side effects which include male lactation, deportation, bankruptcy, and hallucinations of a warbling canadian moose. check out the ad.

but progenitorivox isn't real of course; it's the design of the “consumers union.” the consumers union's objective is not to mock consumers and their serious health problems, such as erectile dysfunction and clinical depression, but rather to push legislation forcing pharmaceutical companies to make the results of their clinical trials public. their effort has been dubbed

the FACT [The Fair Access to Clinical Trials] Act, requiring drug companies to make public all the results of their clinical trials so we’ll know about potentially harmful side effects. And it must create an independent office of drug safety in the Food and Drug Administration to ensure quick action is taken when safety concerns are raised.

on the face of it, the act sounds innocuous - why shouldn't we outlaw certain drugs, which the act would eventually lead to, based on the results of a clinical trial? even putting aside the privacy concerns this raises, the act seems like a bad idea. i am leery of unpublished studies and studies not published in peer-reviewed journals, as is the case with most clinical trials. in general, i believe researchers share in this opinion. so, if it's not good enough for science, why is it good enough for law? criminalizing a sick patient's treatment preference based on a study done by a private company that has neither been replicated nor reviewed seems unjustifiable.

the new york times thinks it’s a great idea though, but does give drug companies a few lines of defense:

"It's a catchy jingle all right and good for a laugh," said Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, "but we really ought to be having serious conversations about how best to help doctors and their patients choose the right medicines."

via gawker, of all places.

Labels: drugs, social