Clinical trials web site may increase transparency

Responding to a deadline issued by the editors of leading medical journals last year, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations has launched a new Web portal designed to help users track clinical trials underway around the country.

The editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet had collectively threatened to stop publishing industry-sponsored studies unless companies increased transparency in the clinical trials system. While the portal does not provide the kind of full disclosure some critics have asked for, it does give researchers a way to track the trials underway at given companies, theoretically making it far more difficult for negative findings to be suppressed.

- see this story from The New York Times