MEDICINAL DRUG TRIALS

That this House notes the collapsing confidence in trials of medicinal drugs by pharmaceutical companies; is alarmed at the mounting evidence that such companies' trials are overwhelmingly biased in their conclusions compared with independent trials concealing adverse effects that have killed tens of thousands of patients; recalls that Sir Iain Chalmers' evidence to the Health Select Committee that one anti-arrhythmic drug in the 1980s killed more people than all the Americans killed in the Vietnam war in spite of evidence of its fatal consequences that was suppressed for 13 years; recalls that the Safety Director of the US Food and Drug Administration said that the painkiller Vioxx caused up to 140,000 strokes and heart attacks in the USA alone; notes claims that Merck suppressed information on Vioxx's dangers in the same way that GlaxoSmithKline denied access to evidence of adverse reactions to Seroxat; and calls for the establishment of an independent drugs testing agency funded by a levy on pharmaceutical companies modelled on the Italian Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco.