Clinical Trials: Private vs. Public

An LAT opinion piece advocates for publicly-funded research though not to the exclusion of private research.

What’s needed is a new Institute for Effective Medicine, which wouldneed to be modeled on the Federal Reserve Board or the Securities andExchange Commission to protect it from political pressure. Its missionwould be threefold. It would serve as a new, independent source ofresearch dollars for medicine. It would provide independent evaluationof data generated by industry. And it would oversee the creation ofclinical practice guidelines, a manual of proven “best practices” forphysicians devised entirely without industry influence.

(Thanks to my colleague Katharine Van Tassel for the pointer.)