Opinion in 2014

The pharmaceutical industry has recently taken steps to make clinical trial data more accessible. But for there to be meaningful transparency, governments—not drug companies—should set the terms of disclosure.

The mentorship of early-career scientists is necessary to their individual career success and the future of the biomedical research enterprise as a whole. Recently launched NIH programs and tools aim to facilitate this important type of training.

A growing number of participants in clinical trials are sharing information about their health online. It's time that the drug development community starts to examine how this social media use might compromise the integrity of research studies and how it might also offer new opportunities.

The European Medicines Agency requires that drug developers submit a 'pediatric investigational plan' to ensure that there is adequate information about how children fare on experimental medication for many indications before they go to market. But this requirement places an undue constraint on the makers of new hemophilia drugs and threatens to create an unreasonable delay in access to these therapies among adults with this disorder in the EU.

The problem of inequity in international research is perpetuated by policies that enable scientists to conduct research in lower-resourced areas of the world without partnering with local researchers. The World Health Organization (WHO) needs to lead in solving this problem by working with research institutions, journal editors and funding agencies to document the degree of inequity and to impose penalties for failures to collaborate.