Posted on 12/08/2003 4:10:27 PM PST by blam
Public is baffled, drug firms admit
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
09 December 2003
British drugs companies admitted yesterday that it is very difficult for the public to find out how well prescription medicines work. In a survey of ten firms carried out by The Independent, none could cite where the layman could easily discover how well products performed in clinical trials.
The findings come a day after a senior executive with Britain's leading drugs company admitted that most prescription drugs do not work for most people.
Most data on "efficacy" - how well the drug did in clinical trials - is buried within obscure scientific journals and rarely if ever published on labels.
A spokesman for the industry said that information ought to be more readily available and rules on what can be said about drugs should be relaxed. Richard Ley of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry added: "We're very restricted about what we can say to the public. We'd like to see the rules eased up so that the facts about medicines can be provided."
The industry believes that printing such efficacy data on labels currently could amount to breaching strict rules on advertising.
Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), admitted in an interview published in this paper yesterday that most drugs do not work for most of the patients who take them, leading to prescriptions based on trial and error.
"The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said.
"I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don't work in everybody."
A spokeswoman for GSK said yesterday that Dr Roses' comments should not come as a surprise. She said: "It is very widely known that there are variations in people's responses to medicines due to differences in their genetics."
"It is important to stress that although medicines may not work in all patients, they do work in a very large proportion, and the regulators license medicines on this basis after large clinical trials in thousands of people."
None of the ten companies approached by The Independent was able to question the accuracy of Dr Roses' comments. But they were only prepared to accept that not all medicines work all of the time.
Dr Ley said: "It's not news to anyone that not all drugs work in all people all the time. Many people will have had the experience of returning to their doctor after receiving a prescription and receiving a second prescription for a different medicine."
He added: "Sometimes the government and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence want to try to find one drug for a particular condition.
"This shows quite clearly that is not a viable approach. A medicine might work well in one person, and not at all for another."
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