New EU trials database is criticised for lack of openness

Experts have warned that the European Union's decision to restrict access to a new clinical trials database to government regulatory authorities will make it more difficult to decide whether commonly used treatments are effective.

Dr Gerd Antes, head of the German Cochrane centre and spokesman for the German Network for Evidence Based Medicine, said that the information on the new European clinical trials database (Eudract) should be made available to the general public as well as to medical researchers.

“Making clinical trial registers available to the public is a scientific, economic, and ethical duty,” he told the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

Under the European clinical trials directive, …