The [s]British Medical Journal’s [/s]Trish Groves reviews the spec ialised media’s response to the Cochrane reviews on Tamiflu and Relenza, drawing on [s]New Scientist, Nature[/s] and [s]The Pharmaceutical Journal[/s]. Among the issues:
* While Randomised Control Trials are the gold standard method for drug assessment, people with ‘relatively mild winter flu… can be randomly given the drug or a placebo without raising ethical dilemmas.’ – [s]New Scientist’s[/s] infectious disease correspondent.
* ‘We should demand better-designed clinical trials and greater transparency, but we should not put lives at risk by ignoring the overwhelming body of evidence accumulated over the past five years that supports the use of antivirals.’ – Peter Openshaw, director of the Centre for Respiratory Infection at [b]Imperial College London[/b], in [s]Nature[/s].
* There was no reason for the 'game of cat and mouse’ that went on between Roche and the Cochrane reviewers. British pharmaceutical industry guidelines ‘instruct members to comply with any reasonable request [and] the Cochrane request was reasonable.' – Stephen Whitehead, CEO [b]Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s[/b] (ABPI) chief executive, in [s]PJ Online[/s].
[link url=http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2014/04/25/trish-groves-media-reaction-to-the-updated-cochrane-reviews-on-tamiflu-and-relenza/?g=widget_default]– British Medical Journal[/link]