Require open source publication of all clinical trials, even the negative results
Well here's an idea: let's end the secrecy of clinical trials and let the public -- and the medical industry -- see what really happens when thousands of people are dosed up on synthetic chemicals. The truth about clinical trials for prescription drugs is that most trials are a sham. The numbers and conclusions are almost universally fraudulent. They're designed to get the drug approved by the FDA for marketing, not to actually determine any level of safety of efficacy for the public.
You see, virtually no drugs are tested in combination with other drugs. Nor are drugs tested for sufficient time to determine their long-term risks. And even the trials that are completed are cherry-picked by their sponsors to drum up the most favorable results possible. This, the FDA claims, is the "gold standard" of drug safety. Which is why, of course, over 100,000 Americans were killed by prescription drugs last year alone.
To help solve this little problem, I say we make all clinical trials open source. Free the data. Let the public and the medical community read for themselves what the results are... for the "good" studies and the bad ones, too. Actually, one organization is already making great strides towards open source published studies. Check out the Public Library of Science journals, which, as far as I can tell, are the only honest medical journals in the industry.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
