“Drugs-evaluating data is generally inadequate” – health journalist

Governments around the world may have wasted billions on an ineffective flu drug. Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of BMJ international medical journal shared her views on Tamiflu and drug evaluation in general.

“The research shows two main things: one is that drug seems to be less effective than was previously thought and that it doesn't seem to be clearly effective in reducing complications in healthy adults. It also shows that data available for evaluating drugs generally is inadequate, because drug companies hold on to data that needs to be publicly available,” Godlee said.

She stressed that “The fact that this particular case required detective work by journalists and academics with limited resources, suggests that the current system really isn't working. So we do need to radically rethink the way drugs are being evaluated and that the data are made available.”