Results of Many Clinical Trials Not Being Reported
The website is clinicaltrials.gov, which draws 57,000 visitors a day, including people who are confronting serious diseases and looking for experimental treatments. A study from Duke University finds that five years after the reporting law took effect, only 13 percent of scientists running clinical trials had reported their results.
“We were really surprised to find that very few people are following the law,” says Dr. Monique Anderson, a cardiologist and the study’s first author.
There are many exceptions in the law, so many of those who have not reported results are at least temporarily exempt from doing so. But Dr. Anderson says researchers should also feel an ethical obligation to make data generated by human volunteers available promptly.
“Any patient who participates in clinical research should expect to see that their participation is going to be used effectively,” she says.
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