Deborah Cohen on the attempts to track down unpublished oseltamivir trial data

“The same standard of openness should apply to all (drug) trial data, whether sponsored by industry, investigator-initiated, or sponsored by public grant-giving bodies.” That’s the view of representatives from the European Medicines Agency and the regulatory bodies from France, the UK, and the Netherlands writing in PLoS Medicine. Their statement comes as accompaniment to an […]

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Joe Collier on swine flu and ministries of fear

One thing about the current swine flu pandemic is that it has brought with it a universal sense of fear. As with all fears, individuals respond differently, but we know what they are feeling because the sensation of fear, which varies from a mild anxiety to incapacitating panic, is so much part of our constitution […]

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Tom Nolan: Is Tamiflu useful in children or not?

Why did the operator at the National Pandemic Flu Service give the child Tamiflu? The cynics will say because the algorithm told him to, but the real answer, according to the UK government, is that it’s the safest thing to do to prevent severe infections. New research in the BMJ questions that policy and looks […]

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Tom Nolan: Confusion over flu advice in pregnancy

Government deliver new advice for pregnant women A storm erupted over the weekend about the government’s advice to pregnant women on swine flu. It all started with the National Childbirth Trust issuing advice that suggested that women consider delaying conception, as their director Belinda Phipps explains: […]

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Mark Jadav: My experience of catching swine flu

After reading my colleagues’ comments on the discussion fora of the harmfulness of playing our ace too soon, I bear the shame of being one of those low-risk (fairly) fit, (relatively) young people with a mild self-limiting viral illness who is consuming the precious stocks of Tamiflu and probably helping develop the resistant strains which […]

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