Mooting the clinical trials registry
The American Medical Association's call for a national clinical trials registry has received a positive response from some quarters of industry and regulators, although some of the endorsements have been hedged with cautions that the devil is in the details.
As with most suddenly popular ideas, the proposal could have unintended consequences. In calling for the registry, AMA has - at least to some extent - called into question the role of FDA as the body that assesses the mass of data surrounding a drug candidate and determines whether it should be available to physicians for use in treating patients. AMA said the proposed registry would advance the pursuit of clinical research by informing physicians about trials with negative or inconclusive results, as well as those that were successful...