Here is an interesting NT Times news story on a clinical drug trial gone
bad. I plan to discuss it in my stats class.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/business/seroquel-xr-drug-trial-frayed-promise.html?_r=1
On aspect of the article highlights how desperate recruitment becomes
for the drug companies. So much more could have been said about this.
In my experience, the stock of the companies rests on the drugs they
have in development. If a trial ends for any reason, the stock values
fall. Since the trial monitors and others are all given stock options,
their personal finances diminishes if a trial is ended early. As a
result, they apply pressure on the investigators to get patients in the
trial at all costs. The investigators are also paid a set amount when a
subject completes the trial. These factors also work to keep the trials
as short in duration as possible. Treating Borderline disorder in 8
weeks and getting positive findings is just expectation bias influencing
the self-report measures. Most people are also unaware of what the drug
companies have done to the IRB process. Virtually all the trials are
now reviewed by for-profit centralized IRBs. This makes the review much
more efficient but presumably reduces local oversight by the
institutions involved in the trials.
Mike Williams
Drexel University
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