1 Boring Old Man

EU agency lifts lid on drug data secrets

Reuters

By Ben Hirschler

July 15, 2012

Europe’s medicines regulator, criticised in the past for excessive secrecy, is opening its data vaults to systematic scrutiny in a move that will let independent researchers trawl through millions of pages of clinical trial information.The change is a landmark in transparency that puts Europe ahead of the United States, according to critics of the $1 trillion-a-year global drugs industry, who have long argued for full access to trial data. Such information is a treasure trove for scientists wanting to test drug company claims and potentially expose product deficiencies. As part of a process of opening up, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) plans to hold a conference in November to consider ways of making large data sets available rapidly and routinely to outside investigators…

But then in May the EMA released a draft of their proposed policy, and a pale fell over the land. It wasn’t the promised open data access. Besides a restrictive application process and the specter of redactions, it required using a screen-only interface. By then, our RIAT group had been using such a system or months and I can attest to the difficulties, likening it to going to sea to see the world in a submarine using a periscope. Peter Doshi and Tom Jefferson [the Tamiflu group at Cochrane] coined the term "U-Turn" to describe this change of heart and there was a universal outcry. Looking back,  I could write about little else [posts catalogued below in case you care to review what happened]. At the time, the general suspicion was that the EMA had made concessions in settling with AbbVie and InterMune. The European Ombudsman got involved and initiated an investigation:

In response to the general alarm, the EMA reconsidered and pledged to drop the restrictions. But when the day came to announce their final policy, they postponed things until October, saying:

Management Board delays formal adoption of EMA publication of clinical trial data policy to October 2014

Further discussion required on wording and practical arrangements

European Medicines Agency

Press Release

09/07/2014

The Management Board of the European Medicines Agency [EMA] has postponed formal adoption of the policy on publication of clinical trial data to its 2 October 2014 meeting. Further clarifications on wording and practical arrangements will be discussed by Board members, who have confirmed their general support to the overall aims and objectives of the policy, including the more user-friendly amendments proposed by EMA Executive Director Guido Rasi that would allow data to be downloaded, saved or printed for academic and non-commercial research purposes…

… so there was little to do but wait:

For the last several months, the climate has been less filled with optimism – more an uneasy waiting with the vague concern that "the other shoe was about to drop." This week, there was a development that didn’t inspire any confidence. The new administration of the European Union is moving the EMA with the responsibility for drug and device approval from the Health Ministry to the Ministry of Enterprise and Industry [I should say, back to the Ministry of Enterprise and Industry where it had been before]. I don’t understand the workings of the EU well enough to know the ins and outs of exactly what that means, but it certainly feels like that "other shoe" dropping to me. I don’t have any idea if that has an ominous portend for the Data Transparency policy due in just two weeks, but it sure raises the question. And it makes one worry that the earlier postponement was about more than "wording and practical arrangements":

I’m aware that I tell this story as if it is a Masterpiece Mystery or a Machiavellian court drama, but I come by that quaisi-paranoia honestly. The pharmaceutical industry may have moved on from the psychiatric drug arena, but they’ve left a legacy of disreputable wheelings and dealings that is inescapable. PHARMA doesn’t want Data Transparency, and I would expect them to use every bit of their considerable power and financial resource to undermine it wherever possible. Without the cloak of secrecy surrounding Clinical Trial results, none of the CNS blockbusters of the last few decades would’ve ever left the gate. And that’s likely true as well industry-wide with other drugs.